


You Can Teach An Old Dog New Tricks

by veeagainst



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M, Remus/Sirius Kink Meme
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-03
Updated: 2013-08-03
Packaged: 2017-12-22 06:41:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 21,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/910119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/veeagainst/pseuds/veeagainst
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This was written for the R/S Kink 2013 challenge. The prompt was: remus / sirius sexy skype call while one is on a mission for the order [this is obviously a modern au] i dont care who gets naked but it’s gotta happen</p>
<p>So here you have it: An AU set during the summer/autumn of 2013 – which here is the summer after OotP. Oh, and Sirius definitely survived the battle at the Ministry.</p>
<p>Rated M for excessively naughty language, irresponsible use of alcoholic beverages, and lots of smut.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Sirius’s Muggle Studies professor had described an essay he wrote in his third year as, ‘One of the most ignorant things ever put to parchment.’

‘And Moony said you couldn’t teach an old dog new tricks,’ Sirius Black says.

The empty room echoes back his words as the laptop in front of him whirs to life. Outside the window, rain is falling, hard, and he can hear it drumming against the windows. He puts on the headphones – a last minute purchase from Curry’s when the speakers on the laptop had sounded too tinny – and lets them settle over his ears, dampening out the sound of the rain.

It’s a weird sensation. He can still smell the tea steaming beside him, his fingers can feel the keyboard, and when he takes a sip of the tea – _ouch, that’s hot_ – he can taste it, or at least the part of his tongue he didn’t just scald can taste it. His ears are the only thing not working properly. Suddenly a musical note blares through the headphones, nearly deafening him, and the dark screen flares into colourful life. He nearly sloshes tea all over the keyboard but keeps it together; Remus had warned him about this. He waits the requisite minute that Remus had ordered him to give the machine time to get started, and then uses the little pad below the keyboard to choose the Skype icon. The screen fills up with a square with some writing in it that he scans anxiously, looking for Remus’s screen name. He’s got a page of notes – all in Remus’s precise handwriting – on what to do. He’s ready.

‘I didn’t get an E on my Muggle Studies O.W.L. for nothing,’ he announces, and the room echoes it back.

* * *

 

After Voldemort had revealed himself in the Ministry, the Order’s situation had degenerated rapidly. Sirius had missed the start of this unravelling – he’d been unconscious in St Mungo’s for over two weeks following the combination of Bellatrix’s Cruciatus curse and the veil wreaking havoc on his body – but the impacts had completely changed the nature of his, and everyone else’s, war. Apparition had become risky business: the Death Eaters had developed a spell to rip Apparators out of the ether mid-flight if they weren’t extremely skilled and careful. The Floo Network was facing constant attacks and had been limited to Ministry business only. Owls, always a bit of a dicey communication system in the best of times due their tendency to be distracted by small game on the ground, were being struck dead and their letters taken and read. The Order had a cipher system for their communications, but ciphers could be broken and more pressing was the issue of owls simply never reaching their destinations. Patronuses could be used for emergency communication, but for simple information sharing, such as reporting back from an intelligence gathering mission, there didn’t seem to be a good solution.

At an Order meeting that Sirius had not been at – being conscious by then, but still weak and still in St Mungo’s – Remus had suggested some Muggle technology that had been summarily rejected by everyone except Dumbledore. After the meeting, when Remus had come to Sirius’s hospital room to discuss what had happened, Dumbledore had arrived.

Sirius sometimes still feels like a naughty teenager about to be sentenced to a lifetime of detentions whenever he is around the Headmaster; Remus, as always, is the more mature of them and so when Dumbledore had stepped into the room and said, without preamble, ‘Remus, I think we should try your idea,’ Remus had responded with a calm affirmative while Sirius had pretended to be asleep.

When Sirius had gotten out of hospital and was feeling mostly recovered, Remus had taken him to a shop called Curry’s and they’d bought a small computer – a _laptop_ , Remus had called it. They’d spent a lot of time laughing about the strange Muggle things in the shop and alienating the bored teenagers who worked there before settling on this one, and that night they’d set it up and Remus had made Sirius watch a Muggle comedy television show on it called _The IT Crowd_ that was nominally about computers and Muggle things but that somehow he’d still found funny. After that, whenever something went wrong, no matter if it was Muggle or magical, they would repeat a particular catchphrase from the show to one another: ‘Did you try turning it off and then on again?’

* * *

 

On the screen, Remus’s name turns green, and a second later, the computer starts making a ringing noise, like a Muggle telephone. Sirius checks the notepad, takes a deep breath, and clicks on “Accept”. A second later the screen fills up with a grainy image of Remus. He is in a small room with the generic look of a lower-end bed and breakfast; that is as expected. The fact that he is bathed in a cold blue light and is just mouthing words is surprising though.

‘Hi!’ Sirius says. He sees that a smaller box has appeared on the screen – windows, he believes those are called – that shows his own image. He waves at Remus and sees himself wave back. Remus mouths something. ‘What? I can’t hear you.’

Another box pops up. This is all getting to be quite a lot. Sirius realises a second later that the new box is filling with words. He squints at it.

It says: ‘You’ve got me on mute!!!’

And a second later: ‘Click on the picture of the microphone with the line through it.’

‘Uhm,’ Sirius says aloud. Remus points emphatically at something that appears to be behind Sirius, but that makes no sense, because all of the parts of the computer are right here. Then Sirius sees the stylised microphone with the line through it on the screen and clicks on that.

‘—and I don’t know how I’m supposed to explain what…’ Remus’s voice trails off. ‘Oh, you got it figured out.’

‘You thought I wasn’t going to get it!’ Sirius says in mock outrage.

Remus raises his eyebrows. His grainy image is stabilising and Sirius finds that he’s ridiculously happy to be talking to him, even though Remus only left two days ago. ‘It isn’t that I don’t think you’re clever…’ Remus says, voice dripping with scepticism.

Sirius laughs and says, ‘Shut up.’

‘Now that you’ve learnt how the mute button works, I assume you can do that for yourself,’ Remus replies.

‘How’s the b and b?’ Sirius asks, making a face to indicate that he’s choosing to be the bigger man and ignore Remus’s jabs. ‘How was the journey? Have you… how’s the mission?’

Remus smiles. ‘Everything’s as good as can be,’ he says reassuringly.

Sirius puts his hands to the sides of the headphones and tries to press out the slight metallic tang that the sound of Remus’s voice has through this strange device. ‘You sound like you’re talking to me from very far away,’ he says.

‘I guess it’s kind of like how when you’re Flooing with someone you can hear the fire crackling,’ says Remus.

‘And you used to use this “Skype” thing all the time?’ Sirius starts fiddling with the wire connecting the headphones to the computer. Remus had described cords to him as being like a wand: they channel the energy required to perform actions. He tries to feel the thrum of the energy the way he can with a wand but it’s not there.

‘I did,’ Remus confirms. ‘Before I taught at Hogwarts, I had a Muggle job where we used it to communicate every day.’

Sirius hums agreement, now running his hand down the wire heading into the wall.

‘Don’t touch that at the wall, by the way,’ Remus adds, some urgency in his voice. ‘You’ll electrocute yourself.’

‘Oh right,’ Sirius says brightly. ‘Electricity. Muggle magic.’

Remus laughs. ‘You know, there’s this Muggle who said that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”. I always thought it was a stupid saying since of course we understand quite a lot about how magic works, but right now, I feel like I’m suddenly seeing it from the Muggle perspective.’

‘You know what,’ Sirius barks, but there’s no bite behind it. Remus grins at him and he grins back.

* * *

 

Grimmauld Place had been rumbled, obviously, by Kreacher’s treachery. Sirius hasn’t been back; sometime during those weeks in St Mungo’s, someone had retrieved his scant belongings and moved them to Ted and Andromeda Tonks’ place. Sirius had been grateful for their offer of a place to stay indefinitely once he was out of hospital, but he’d found it stifling after thirty six hours. There was something wrong with him (probably more than just one something, really) since Azkaban and he’d found that he needed to be alone or else have Remus there to be a calming presence and to mitigate the effects of other people.

He had been contemplating his escape from the Tonks’ when Remus himself had turned up on the doorstep. Sirius had been almost pathetically grateful to see him; if he’d been in dog form, he probably would have wagged his tail so hard that his legs would have fallen out from under him. In the Tonks’ cosy but well-appointed sitting room, over a cup of tea, Remus had suggested that Sirius and he share the rent on a flat in Oxford. Order members were going to ground, scattering and heading into hiding, now that they were so well known amongst the Death Eaters.

‘So it’s a ground floor flat in a nice house with a gar-‘

‘Great, fine, let’s take it,’ Sirius had said.

‘-den,’ Remus had finished, and his lips had quirked at the edges like he’d wanted to smile. ‘Don’t you want to know how many bedrooms?’

Sirius had looked around the sitting room, lowered his voice, and said, ‘I’ll sleep on the bloody floor as a dog, I don’t care.’

‘Are they beating you or something here?’

‘Just…’ Sirius had hesitated and met Remus’s eyes. ‘You know. It’s a lot.’

‘I do know,’ Remus had said. He paused, took a sip of tea. ‘We can sign the lease tonight, if you want.’

Sirius had nodded. He very, very much wanted. 

* * *

 

‘So anything I can report back to Dumbledore?’ Sirius asks slightly-blurry screen Remus.

‘When are you going to start calling him Albus?’

‘When his name doesn’t make me feel about sixteen years old.’

Remus rolls his eyes. ‘You should have thought of this before you did all those bad things at school.’

‘Yeah, well,’ Sirius huffs and flicks his teacup with his fingernail. ‘You know me. Practically a seer.’

‘Oh god,’ Remus says, ‘don’t bring up prophecies.’

Sirius starts laughing and almost can’t stop. ‘What a waste of fucking… everything, right?’

‘Honestly,’ Remus says, ‘if you’d died, I probably would have gone out and murdered a seer in retaliation for how _incredibly stupid_ even the idea of prophecies is.’

‘Luckily everyone was all right,’ Sirius says. They’re solemn and silent for a second and then he says, ‘I wonder how Harry is.’

‘Haven’t you been writing to him?’

‘I have. He’s not the most communicative letter writer. I can’t believe that Dumbledore – _Albus_ – god, it’s easier for me to say Voldemort than to say that – but I can’t believe he won’t let Harry come stay with us.’

‘We know why, though,’ Remus says, and Sirius sighs, because Remus is always so, so sensible.

‘But James…’

‘Preaching to the choir, I promise you,’ Remus says, and there’s a slight delay on the screen as he puts his hands up. ‘But I’m going to trust Albus. He’s gotten us this far.’

‘It’s like every time you say Albus I have to stop and think about who you actually mean.’

‘Oh grow up, Padfoot,’ says Remus, but there’s a lot more fondness in it than annoyance, Sirius thinks. ‘And I haven’t got anything to report, I’m sorry to say. I just got here and made contact this morning, you know.’

‘I don’t,’ Sirius says pointedly. ‘I don’t even know where you are.’ He’s just the messenger here, the vessel to collect the data and pass it on to Dumbledore in person, so Death Eaters can’t intercept it. He feels like he’s being kept in the dark again – but at least he’s not being literally kept in the dark, inside of his miserable family home, so that’s something anyway.

* * *

 

The financial arrangement between them had required more negotiation.

Sirius has a lot of money; an embarrassingly large amount of money, in fact. His father, for all his faults in that department, had been a smart investor and, at a time when many of the old wizarding (and for that matter Muggle) families had been going bankrupt, the already massive fortune of the Blacks continued to grow. Shortly after the end of the Triwizard Tournament, Dumbledore had come to Remus’s – they had been staying in the cottage that Remus grew up in and had inherited from his parents – and had asked to speak to Sirius. The conversation had been delicate but to the point: the Order did not have money, but it needed it. Sirius was a wanted man and couldn’t go out much. Perhaps he could work on solving this money problem. Sirius had not gotten the point, initially, and had asked Remus over dinner that night how guerrilla organisations generally funded themselves. After the first fall of Voldemort, Remus had travelled extensively and at some point had been kidnapped in Peru by a guerrilla group – maybe he’d picked up some tips there.

‘Hm,’ Remus had said, putting down his fork and frowning. ‘Well, I think there are three traditional methods.’

‘Which are…?’

Remus had ticked them off. ‘Drug running, money laundering, usually associated with the drug running, and popular support.’

Sirius had cocked his head. ‘Do you think Dumbledore wants me to set up some kind of illegal operation for funding the Order?’

Remus had burst into laughter. ‘No,’ he’d said. ‘No, no, no. Did he come talk to you today about this?’

Sirius had nodded, mystified.

‘Popular support, Padfoot,’ Remus had said, and he’d raised his eyebrows when Sirius had shaken his head. ‘You know, the people who support the organisation…’

Sirius had caught on then. ‘You mean wealthy people.’                                

‘Right. So, you. You know that James and Lily financed a lot of it the first time.’

‘I didn’t know that, no,’ Sirius had said.

He had wondered then – and still wondered now – if he should have known it, somehow. As a Black, he rarely thinks about money. If he wants something, he just draws on the Gringotts account that has had his name on it since before he was born. Even in the years when he’d been a runaway, cut off from his parents’ support, he’d had his inheritance from his uncle to fall back on – and now that he is the last of the Blacks, he’s able to do things like buy his godson a Firebolt without a thought. Money is like an endless well into which he can always dip his hand and draw up cold, perfect water.

 Remus had smiled at his naivety, and had even helped him work out his books and set up an easy way to transfer funds to the Order when it needed them, but the whole incident had made Sirius a lot more aware of the fact that he had money and Remus didn’t. When they’d signed the lease on the flat, Sirius had tried to be sensitive to the price, but he’d had no idea if it was a good one or not and would have taken any number within an order of magnitude higher. After signing the lease, they’d gone to Tesco together – Sirius is thrilled, now that he has a pardon, to be able to do things like go out to the shops, which always makes Remus laugh – and Sirius had allowed Remus to choose things from the Tesco own brand line and hadn’t even made a face when Remus had gotten some inferior biscuits because they were on offer. For two weeks, Sirius had lived with this inferior biscuit regime, but he’d been trying to think of a tactful way to get Remus to let him pay for everything when the problem had sorted itself.

Sirius had been out for a little walk – at the start of their time in Oxford, Remus had been working as a tutor and so was often gone, and Sirius likes time to himself now, but he also likes to come home to Remus being in the house so he takes a walk in the evening to get that feeling of excitement when he walks through the door and knows he’s not alone – and when he had come back on that particular evening he had found Remus sitting on the couch, staring out at the garden, looking pensive.

‘How’s it?’ he’d asked.

Remus had sighed and said, ‘Not great.’

‘What’s wrong?’ Sirius had asked, instantly on high alert. ‘What’s happened? Is everyone ok? Is there bad news?’

Remus had shaken his head quickly. ‘Nothing to worry about, I promise,’ he’d said. ‘Albus wants me to take a mission that will mean having to give up my tutoring commitments, that’s all.’ And he’d gone back to looking out the window.

‘What’s the mission?’ Sirius had asked, already knowing the answer.

‘Not supposed to share, of course,’ Remus had said dully. ‘Eliminate possibilities for spying, all that.’

‘Yeah,’ Sirius had said, and he’d sat down on the floor in front of Remus and smiled. ‘You know me, high risk for being a spy.’

Remus had smiled back and exhaled, a half laugh, and Sirius had seen his opening. ‘Well, don’t you worry about the rent,’ he’d said.

Remus had been silent for several seconds, and then he’d focused on Sirius and had said, in a tense voice, ‘I don’t like charity.’

‘That’s not very nice,’ Sirius had quipped. ‘Charities do great work.’

‘Sirius…’

‘Oh shut up with the pride, Moony,’ Sirius had said. ‘I haven’t got any left with you, that’s for damn sure. You’ve seen me at my absolute worst these past few years.’ Remus had sighed, but he hadn’t looked convinced, so Sirius had added his final, and most convincing, argument.  ‘Anyway, I’m the financial backer of the Order, so you’ll be on my payroll.’


	2. Sirius once spent three hours trying to set his Skype avatar to a picture of Richard Ayoade from the IT Crowd. He was ultimately unsuccessful.

For the sixth time, Sirius accepts Remus’s Skype call. They talk every three days, on a set schedule. Sirius is finding it increasingly difficult to a. fake that he has no idea what Remus’s mission is and b. fake that he isn’t living for these Skype calls. He’s been spending his spare time trying to learn more about managing money with the idea being that he wants to be able to fund the Order indefinitely; unfortunately that trying hasn’t been yielding results because he often catches himself staring off into space, thinking about something Remus had said on Skype.

‘Hey,’ he says, waving as the screen shakes and resolves from large pixels – a new word for him, he’s getting computer literate very quickly, he thinks with pride – into the smaller ones that make up Remus’s face.

Remus is frowning and looking at something to the side, but when he sees Sirius he gives him a little smile and says, ‘How are you?’

‘I’m ok,’ Sirius says. ‘You look worried. Everything ok?’

‘I…’ Remus gets a protracted look on his face. ‘I got hit by some kind of weird hex,’ he says. ‘On my side. I can’t see it very well, but it feels… weird.’

‘What kind of hex was it?’ Sirius asks. He reaches across the table to the bookshelf and pulls down a healing reference book – always good to keep around when living with a werewolf.

‘Not sure, honestly,’ Remus says. ‘It was purple? And now it feels kind of… burny? And itchy?’

‘Wow,’ Sirius says, flicking through the book but keeping his eyes on Remus. He dislikes the way that the camera on the computer distorts the image of Remus’s face and upper body, dislikes the cold blue light that it’s bathed in, but it’s nice to see him anyway. ‘That’s a really stellar description.’

‘I dunno,’ Remus snaps, ‘I feel like it’s not your normal hex.’

‘Who hit you with it?’ Sirius asks. ‘Death Eaters? Think it was dark?’

‘No…’ Remus says. There’s a long pause and then he says, ‘I’m sure you can make your own guess.’

‘Werewolves, you mean?’ Sirius replies. He tries to keep his voice as casual as possible. ‘Because, yeah, I know that you’re hanging out with some of them there. And by there, I’m pretty sure I mean Scotland.’

‘Well done,’ Remus says, and Sirius isn’t sure over the metallic sound of the headphones, but he thinks that Remus sounds relieved.

‘Convinced any of them to come over to our side?’ he asks, now gazing intently at the book but listening hard.

‘Not particularly, no,’ Remus says, sighing heavily. ‘Fuck it, Sirius, I don’t care if you know what I’m doing. You’re not going to turn spy and frankly it’s insulting to both of us to carry on this charade.’

Sirius laughs and their eyes meet for a second on the screen. Then Remus’s hand strays down to his side and he scratches at it and winces. ‘Come on,’ Sirius says, ‘tell me what exactly happened and let’s see if we can figure out what it is and how to fix it.’

‘So,’ Remus says, twisting around to look again, ‘there’s this woman here who’s kind of… the leader of the werewolves. There’s a big gang of them who live in Glasgow.’ His voice has gone muffled as he’s turned away from the computer.

‘Great place for them to hide, what with all the knife crime.’

‘Yeah but the broken glass is murder on your paws,’ Remus replies, turning back, and then he looks mortified but Sirius laughs.

‘Been trying it out?’

‘Wolfsbane is available for free in Scotland, you know.’

‘Wow, they really do get all the benefits up there, don’t they?’ Sirius says.

‘Topical devolution humour?’ Remus asks, looking impressed. ‘I didn’t even know you could read, let alone read the Muggle news.’

Sirius makes a face. ‘So you’re hanging out with this woman…’

‘Right, Deena is her name. She’s – I respect her. She’s been fighting for werewolf rights since before I was born. But she’s understandably mistrustful of the Ministry.’

‘Since they really don’t seem to have the best interests of werewolves at heart.’

‘Exactly. And since they haven’t done for, well, I can’t even say how long.’

‘Never, I’d guess,’ Sirius says and Remus nods, making a sad face. ‘But you don’t work for the Ministry.’

‘No,’ Remus agrees, ‘but the Order has a lot of Aurors and a lot of overlap with Ministry employees. And of course as Deena pointed out to me, the Order hasn’t explicitly come out with any manifesto that isn’t “Defeat Voldemort” – so she says that until we outline a pro-rights agenda, she’s not interested and she won’t use any of her influence over other werewolves or other dark creatures. However, she did say that I was free to try to recruit from her ranks – she didn’t consider me an enemy to their cause either.’

Sirius is trying to picture the scene – a dark underground room? A den? That’s certainly the kind of place he favours for furtive activities, as a canine. ‘How did you convince her of that?’

Remus shrugs and the image pixelates again. ‘By being sincere, I suppose? She thinks I’m crazy for being in the Order. She doesn’t think that any human would be friends with a werewolf unless there was some ulterior motive.’

Sirius snorts. ‘Can I come meet her?’ he asks. ‘You can tell her my ulterior motive is that you put up with me.’

Remus smiles. ‘I could also point out that one third of the people I thought were my friends turned out to be actual treacherous rats, so there’s only a sixty-seven percent success rate.’ He twists suddenly and his voice comes back muffled again. ‘Ouch! This thing is only getting worse.’

Sirius flips to the ‘Painful hexes’ page of the book. ‘Ok, what colour was it coming out of the wand? And you never actually told me who did it.’

‘A werewolf who did not want to be recruited,’ says Remus shortly. ‘And I think it was purple? It was kind of dark, to be honest.’

‘Hm, ok,’ says Sirius, and he flips to the appropriate page. ‘Let’s see, so you said it kind of itches, but also hurts? Secondary symptoms,’ he murmurs, running his finger down the enormous index page for the ‘Painful hexes: purple.’ ‘Ok, there’s about five that might qualify,’ he says.

There’s a silence while he reads. Then Remus says, ‘Thanks for looking this up. I feel like a right twat. I don’t think I’ve been properly hexed since school.’

Sirius laughs and looks up to see Remus looking shamefaced on screen. ‘Let your guard down?’

‘I really did,’ Remus says. ‘Thought he was a friend.’

Something about the way Remus says it sets off Sirius’s intrigue alarms. Ever since he and Remus had renewed their friendship that night in the Shrieking Shack, Remus has been periodically coming out with little statements about the gap of twelve years that Sirius has in his mind of Remus’s whereabouts and life experiences that never fail to pique Sirius’s curiosity. ‘Friend?’ he asks.

‘Friend, acquaintance,’ Remus says, and a moment later Sirius sees his screen representation shrug. ‘During the last war – or last incarnation of the same war, whatever you want to call it – I did a very similar mission and met this man, David. I thought we got along then, and we kept in touch a bit over the years. But he’s had some negative experiences with Ministry people since, I suppose, and Aurors in particular – and he knows that the Order has some Aurors as members. We had an argument. I thought we would just walk away, and leave it at a peaceful, well, sorry, we’ll never see each other again, kind of moment, but then as I was walking away, he hexed me.’

‘So what did you do?’

Remus shrugs again. ‘I was walking away under a bridge, he was walking away to go up the stairs onto the bridge. He disappeared and I just came back here.’

‘Did this just happen? Has the pain been getting worse?’

Remus winces. ‘It’s not been getting better, I’ll say that. It happened… about an hour ago?’

Sirius finds two candidates for the possible hex in the book, but they have radically different treatments. ‘What does it look like?’ he asks.

Remus twists around and appears to be struggling. Sirius is reminded strongly of a dog trying to chase its own tail. ‘I can’t see,’ he says eventually, turning back.

‘Well, let me see it then,’ Sirius says. ‘The way to tell between these two hexes is to look at the shape of the burn.’

‘It’s ok,’ Remus says, ‘I’m sure it will go away.’

Sirius shakes his head, reading further. ‘No, they both require some treatment or else they get worse.’

Remus makes a little humming sound that Sirius knows means he’s unhappy. ‘Bugger.’

‘Well, just let me see it,’ Sirius suggests.

Remus turns his back to the camera and pulls his shirt up about an inch. Sirius can’t see anything except a thin strip of pale skin.

‘You’ve got to pull your shirt up a bit further,’ Sirius says, squinting at the screen. Remus tugs the shirt about a millimetre higher. Sirius can’t see a damned thing. ‘Maybe just take the shirt off?’ he suggests.

Remus turns back to the screen and makes a face. ‘Really?’

‘What?’ Sirius is mystified.

‘I dunno,’ Remus says. He pauses. ‘This is kind of stupid.’

‘What is?’

Remus sighs. ‘Have you _ever_ seen me without a shirt?’

Sirius opens his mouth to tell Remus that _of course he has_ , but then stops. ‘Not… that I can remember, no.’

‘So…’ Remus hesitates. ‘This is going to sound… really stupid.’

Sirius raises his eyebrows.

‘Are you making a face?’ Remus asks. ‘The camera isn’t great.’

‘I’m looking confused. And expectant.’

Remus sighs again. ‘I’ve been a werewolf a long time,’ he says.

Sirius blinks. ‘I have no idea what you’re getting at.’

‘I have a _lot_ of scars,’ Remus says in a rush. ‘I feel… I don’t like to show them off.’

‘Oh,’ Sirius says, somewhat stupidly. ‘But…’ Remus is looking incredibly embarrassed. Sirius looks at him for a moment and then hits upon an idea. ‘You know, when I was in prison, I got some tattoos that I’m not exactly keen to show off either.’

Remus frowns. ‘Why’d you get them?’

‘Boredom?’ Sirius suggests. ‘I wasn’t in the greatest place, mentally. You know.’

‘I know,’ Remus says gently. ‘Who gave them to you?’

‘I did them myself.’

It’s hard to tell over Skype, but Sirius thinks that Remus’s eyes narrow. ‘That sounds painful.’

Sirius doesn’t like to think about that time in his life. Even bringing it up is making him feel that old tension in the pit of his stomach. He focuses on Remus’s face and says, ‘So here’s my thought.’

‘Hm?’ Remus is subtly trying to scratch at the hex’s mark.

‘I’ll take off my shirt if you take off yours.’

Remus stops scratching and says, ‘What?’

Sirius shrugs. ‘Put it all out on the table. We’ll both look bad together.’

‘That is a really stupid idea,’ Remus says flatly. ‘Unless you have a tattoo that says “I love dementors” with multiple misspellings and some random Japanese characters thrown in for that extra gap year feel, I don’t think it’s going to look that bad.’

‘I did them _myself_ ,’ Sirius emphasises. ‘With a _dull knife_.’

‘Holy shit, Padfoot,’ Remus says, sounding appalled. ‘If you had a knife, why didn’t you just break out?’

‘No one cared if we had knives,’ Sirius says. ‘We got them with dinner. What part of a dementor do you want me to stab?’

‘I don’t know,’ Remus snaps. ‘The face?’

‘Oh right, the part I really want to get so close to that stabbing with a piece of silverware will be effective,’ Sirius snaps back. Remus glares. Sirius, knowing he’s about to win but not entirely sure what it is he’s winning, says, ‘I can’t believe you’re turning down the opportunity to critique which kanji I chose as part of my _twelve gap years in Azkaban_.’

‘Oh shut the fuck up,’ Remus says. He reaches up, undoes one button of his shirt, stops, and gestures at Siruis. ‘Well? Off with it!’

Victory is so sweet. Sirius does actually have some pretty awful tattoos of runes and things – including a lunar chart on his forearm that was his first attempt and that appears to depict a sequence of increasingly misshapen eggs at random intervals – but he really doesn’t care if Remus sees them. Back at Hogwarts, James and he had been somewhat famous for how often they wound up naked in front of Gryffindor House. Sirius had always called it free advertising to the girls.

He tugs his shirt off and tosses it aside. ‘Done.’

Remus glances up at him quickly, frowns, and then bends down and unbuttons the next button. Very, very slowly. Sirius watches him with increasing interest as he undoes another, and then another, and then another. He feels like a mystery is being revealed to him. It gives him a weird feeling in his stomach very unlike the one thinking about Azkaban does.

Remus pulls the shirt off one sleeve at a time and then looks up at Sirius. He has dark hair, not too thick, across his chest, that trails off into a dark line around his belly button and down further, below the view of the camera. He’s thin, but, to Sirius’s surprise – mostly surprise that he’s noting it – athletic looking, with defined muscles. There are also scars: long, thin, diagonal ones, like claw marks, and a few thicker ones, most of them slashes except for a round one just below his right clavicle. They’re fascinating. Sirius wonders what it would be like to touch one.

‘What is that on your forearm?’ Remus asks, and Sirius starts, realising that he’s been staring for quite some time. He twists the arm up and holds it towards the camera so Remus can see it.

‘Lunar chart,’ he says. ‘That was the first tattoo I ever did, so it looks like rampaging hippogriffs, but, you know.’ Sirius manages to tear his eyes away from Remus’s chest and look at his face, but Remus is staring at Sirius’s body with a slight frown. ‘And here,’ Sirius says, pointing to the tattoo above his heart – his best effort, by far, despite the awkward placement, ‘we have a wolf and a stag.’

‘No rat, I trust,’ Remus says, and Sirius growls. ‘I didn’t think so,’ Remus says softly. He puts his hand up and it draws close, so close that it blacks out the camera temporarily, and Sirius realises that Remus is touching the screen. ‘Are those Harry’s initials?’

‘Yes,’ Sirius says, reflexively touching the initials on his left shoulder, like he used to do, and still sometimes does, at night, in Azkaban, and later, in the Forest and now wherever home is at the moment. Remus’s house, usually. ‘They were awful to cut in, though. Impossible to see.’

‘They look perfect,’ Remus says. He has a strange smile now. ‘These are really works of art, Sirius.’

‘What’s that from?’ Sirius asks, pointing at the round scar on Remus’s shoulder.

‘I got…’ Remus pauses. ‘Impaled, I guess you could say. With a fence stake.’

‘What? How?’

Remus laughs and rolls his eyes, running the long fingers of his left hand across the scar. ‘By an idiot who thought that one could kill _all_ dark creatures with a wooden stake.’

Sirius laughs too, but he knows that it must have hurt when it had happened. He understands why Remus had tried to touch the screen. His hand itches to reach out and stroke along that collarbone, to feel the scar under his fingers. ‘Any other good stories?’

‘Not really,’ Remus says. ‘Almost all of these are from myself. Although this one…’ He puts a hand onto a particularly prominent, short scar above his belly button. ‘From when we were at school. I don’t know if you remember. Prongs found some little lake and everyone was swimming… I dove in, but it turns out that there was something rusty down there. I had a hell of a time explaining to Madam Pomfrey what had happened – she kept saying, “I wanted them to remove all the metal from the Shack!” and I was worried I was about to get someone in trouble.’

Sirius bursts into laughter. ‘God, we were complete idiots.’

Remus nods and winces. ‘We really, really were.’

They pause, again, and then Sirius asks a question he’s suddenly dying to know. ‘Is one of those where you were bitten?’

‘No,’ Remus says. ‘That’s on my thigh.’ He doesn’t seem upset at the asking, even though Sirius has never heard him speak of that night before in anything but the briefest terms.

‘Did it hurt badly?’ Sirius asks, regretting it as soon as he says it, but again, Remus doesn’t look mad.

‘I actually don’t remember.’ He bites his lip and looks down. ‘I climbed out of my bedroom window because I saw a dog in the garden and I wanted to play with him. Dogs were my favourite animal when I was a little kid. I desperately wanted one but we lived in the city and my parents said I couldn’t have one. Anyway, it wasn’t a dog, suffice it to say. I woke up in hospital to hear my mother arguing with the healer. He was telling her that it would be a mercy if I never woke up and my mother slapped him in the face.’

Sirius whistles between his teeth. ‘Good for you, Mrs. Lupin.’

‘Yeah,’ says Remus quietly, and Sirius wonders if he’s pushed things too far.

‘Let’s see that hex,’ he says, and Remus obediently turns around. Sirius identifies it as a Suppurating Hex and tells Remus what to put on it and Remus says, ‘Ugh, I’ll have to go out to the shops.’

‘You should do that soon,’ Sirius says, reading the hex’s effects, but he doesn’t want Remus to go.

‘All right,’ Remus says. They give one another a long look and then Remus puts his shirt back on. Sirius feels as if a spell has been broken. They hang up the Skype call and then Sirius is left in their sitting room, shirtless, alone, and feeling very, very strange.


	3. Despite all the jokes that James used to make about Sirius being a dog, he actually spent more time in his early twenties fixing up his motorcycle than getting laid – and he has no regrets.

That night, Sirius lies on the couch, fading in and out of sleep, wishing that his body would make up its mind either way. Sometimes now beds make him feel confined, which combined with slight insomnia rapidly leads to feeling imprisoned, so he’s moved out to the couch and is curled up in a ball under a blanket, his favourite way to sleep, but sleep is not coming. He could change into a dog, which is always his final bid against a racing mind, but he’s not entirely sure he wants to. What his mind is racing over is something that it hasn’t contemplated in anything but a theoretical sense since he went to Azkaban.

He’s thinking about sex.

Almost twelve years in a place where any good thoughts were systematically stripped away means that Sirius had not had - or for that matter, even thought about - any kind of sexual activity there. He knows there were people who did, but those people apparently had a very specific set of fetishes that he cannot even fathom possessing. When he'd escaped from Azkaban, he'd been on the run, alone, and not exactly in the physical, mental, or emotional states to seek out intimacy. After he'd escaped from Hogwarts, safe in the knowledge that Harry was all right for now, he'd spent a few months away, only corresponding with Harry and Remus, and during the short tropical summer days, he'd lain on the beach and after some detached self -experimentation, concluded that his sexual days might be over for good. The news didn't devastate him; sex had always been fun, of course, but there were so many other things to live for and he was genuinely grateful just to have the opportunity to experience those. All through his time guarding Harry during the Triwizard Tournament and in Grimmauld Place, he'd basically forgotten about it.

Now, though, he’s thinking that that assessment might have been a tad bit hasty.  Apparently all he'd needed these past few years was to see his friend take off his shirt, because suddenly, he is seriously horny. Of course, he thinks, the question then becomes whether he is actually interested in Remus, or just latching onto the first individual of any gender he's seen topless in almost fifteen years.

What is really keeping him up – besides the horniness, of course, although that hasn’t yet manifested itself into something physical that he could _take care of_ , which is both frustrating as hell and a little bit enjoyable – is that, now that he thinks about it, Remus is the only man he’s ever even contemplated having sex with. Sure, at the time that he’d thought it, he'd felt so drunk that it was a wonder that he'd been able to speak, let alone hand out a proposition; but in retrospect he can't have been that drunk, because now, lying alone and suddenly missing Remus with a pain that borders on the physical, he can recall every moment of that night.

It had been James's stag do, and, predictably, it had turned into a Marauders' drinking fest in Sirius's flat. He'd tried to plan it so more people would participate - he really had, he swears - but by the time they'd gotten thrown out of their second Soho club for drunken disorderliness (something about a transfigured toilet? He can’t remember the exact details), the rest of the group had drifted away and, with a collective sense of relief that they could really let go now, the four of them had somehow marshalled themselves into a taxi and back to his flat.

There, a bottle of firewhisky at the ready, James had demanded that they play truth or dare. It was a truth well known that Remus always took dare, and so with James arbitrarily handing out drinks both for dares poorly given and poorly executed – to his mind, at least -- , things had escalated rapidly. Several shots in, James dared Remus to kiss one of the others. Remus had hesitated, then swayed towards Peter, who had belatedly realised what was happening and protested that he was spoken for and that Sirius was a single man, and couldn’t Remus just maybe kiss Sirius instead? Remus, ever an obedient drunk, had swung around, grabbed Sirius by the shoulders, and planted a sloppy kiss that tasted strongly of liquor right on his mouth. Sirius remembers only two things about that kiss: first, that Remus had _definitely_ used tongue, and second, that he’d gotten an instant hard on from it.

Not long after, the stag do phase of the night had effectively ended. James at some point had staggered to the couch and promptly passed out with his trousers half off. Sirius and Remus had dragged his legs onto the couch and Remus had thoughtfully covered him in a tea towel. Peter had disappeared some minutes earlier; they’d found him passed out with his face on the toilet seat.

‘Well how am I supposed to take a piss?’ Sirius had asked, and Remus, who had been living on his couch for several months at that point in between Order missions, had given him a plaintive look and said, ‘Where am I supposed to sleep?’

An idea had come to Sirius then – a terrible, terrible idea that sober him would have dismissed instantly if not never even thought of. Drunk Sirius was a different creature, and right then, with two of his best friends passed out around him and the third swaying slightly on the spot, he had a sudden urge to fuck someone – anyone. He remembers now with a terrible clarity how he’d looked at Remus and thought, _yeah._

Sirius had never been discriminating about sex; he’d always been up for anything that was suggested to him, from missionary position to covering each other in food and licking it out of orifices. Just because he'd never been with a man before didn't mean that he wasn't, in that drunk and horny state, intensely interested. After all, they'd had that kiss before. Remus had used tongue. That was practically a come on. He'd stepped towards Remus predatorily and had said, ‘Come sleep in my room, why don’t you?’

Remus had hesitated, and Sirius, mindful that James and Peter were passed out and, at least in the existence that they had led then, this might be the only chance he ever got to have Remus alone, had closed the gap between them. He’d taken one of Remus 's hands in his own, yanked him close, and had kissed him. It had been clumsy as fuck, sloppy, tongue everywhere, and Remus had staggered, but he hadn't let go and he hadn’t backed away. Sirius had tried to back him into his bedroom, but they'd somehow gotten hung up on the doorframe, but it had been ok, because Remus 's body had been hard and pressed up against him. Then Remus had broken them apart and staggered backwards into the room, drawing Sirius along by the hand. Sirius had somehow - perhaps ingrained knowledge from previous drunken hookups - had the foresight to shut the door. He’d put a chair in front of it for good measure. They'd fallen into his narrow bed in a tangle of limbs and had spent some time rolling around, kissing and grabbing and half wrestling for control, with lots of frantic but clumsy rubbing through clothing and comical near tumbles and head smacks. Sirius broke a wine glass with his foot and Remus whacked his head against the wall so loudly that they had both frozen and stared at each other dumbly for a few seconds before going back at it. Slowly, they'd both calmed, as the shots and the late hour and the fact that they'd just spent fourteen hours straight drinking their way across London had caught up with them. Remus had nuzzled down against Sirius, so he, his own eyes incredibly heavy, had murmured, ‘In the morning then,’ and Remus had nodded his agreement into Sirius’s chest.  

When the morning had come, Sirius had awoken to the sticky-tongued nausea that he had known meant an appalling hangover was imminent. Remus had been half atop him, still asleep, breathing heavily onto his neck and drooling slightly all over his shirt. Sirius, attempting to stave off the hangover and obviously still a little bit drunk if this had seemed like a good idea, had tried to put his hand down Remus’s trousers, but they had been too tight. Remus had woken slightly just as Sirius’s hand had made contact with the thicker, curly hair that was going to be Sirius’s gateway to sex and had put his hand on Sirius’s, mumbling and trying to shove his hand further down. It had been no use; the trousers had been too tight. Sirius had had a brief grope of Remus’s cock through the material – the one and only cock he’d ever even come close to touching that wasn’t his own – and then James had started yelling from the other room. The wedding was two hours away and James had just vomited all over himself.

By the time Sirius and Remus had had a moment alone again it had been at the reception, and, although Sirius had formed a vague plan to actually bed Remus after the wedding itself, he had found that, between the hangover, his own awkwardness, and the overt heterosexuality of the wedding (one of the bridesmaids had practically mauled his face while they’d been waiting for their cue) he couldn’t face bringing it up with him. They’d never spoken of the incident again.

Now, though, Sirius is racked with wonder about it all. What did Remus think then? Did Remus remember? Might Remus be remembering _right now_? And has he, Sirius Black, completely lost his fucking mind? Remus is the only person in the world who has even the vaguest grasp on understanding him, who even – Harry aside, because Harry doesn’t count, because Harry only knows him as his godfather – Remus is the only person I the whole wide world who even _likes_ him. Here Sirius is, thinking about _having sex_ with this person, and everyone knows that having sex is the number one way to screw up a friendship. Sirius wonders if he’d going through some kind of delayed early twenties since he never really got one of those.

‘Fuck,’ he says out loud, tossing and turning. ‘Fuck, fuck, fucking fuck fuck.’ 


	4. Tequila is Remus’s kryptonite; the only time he’s ever blacked out from drink was after ten shots of Cuervo. Why did he do ten shots of Cuervo? He was at a party full of the worst kind of Pureblood and he and Lily needed something to amuse themselves.

Sirius prides himself on having learned patience in Azkaban, but by the time that Remus calls next, his metaphorical fingernails are worn to nubs from all the wall-clawing he’s been doing. He’s been dwelling on this call and when Remus’s face appears on the screen he feels a sense of relief that is almost palpable.

Except then, Remus doesn’t seem to have been dwelling at all. He passes on some intelligence – mostly back-den werewolf talk, gossip even, about Voldemort’s next moves – and then they make some inane conversation that mostly consists of quoting Charm the Week from last night’s WWW broadcast – and then Remus seems like he’s just going to go to bed. Sirius does have a backup plan on the bizarre off chance that Remus isn’t going to bring up the fact that they should definitely try some sexual experimentation together based on the strength of one drunken evening snog session nearly seventeen years ago, one half-drunken morning grope also nearly seventeen years ago, and the fact that they had recently seen each other without shirts on from hundreds of miles apart via the medium of Muggle electricity.

‘So,’ he opens, ‘it’s Friday night.’

‘What?’ says Remus. ‘It’s Thursday.’

‘Huh.’ Sirius looks at the calendar on the wall. ‘So it is. But, it’s not like we have nine to five jobs at the Ministry or something.’

‘That’s true…’

‘And you have been working really hard.’

Remus’s face, even at this screen resolution, is clearly confused. ‘I suppose.’

‘I think you have,’ Sirius says loyally. ‘Seven days a week, it seems like.’

‘Well, I think it’s important…’

‘But,’ Sirius cuts in, ‘you should also take care of yourself.’

‘Oh,’ Remus says. He looks startled. ‘That’s… nice of you to say.’ He frowns at Sirius. ‘Why would it matter if it were Friday night?’

 _Trump card_ , Sirius thinks, and he pulls out a bottle of firewhisky and places it in view of the camera. ‘I thought we might have a little party.’

Remus starts laughing. It doesn’t sound like a rejection, but then, Sirius hasn’t gotten to the sexy part yet. ‘I don’t have anything to drink,’ he says.

‘Well go out and get something,’ Sirius replies. ‘I’ll wait here.’

Remus purses his lips, and Sirius can tell he’s going to do it. ‘All right. Give me a minute.’ He stands and Sirius has a glimpse of the middle of his body, heavily pixelated, before he bends down and his face reappears. ‘Do not,’ he says sternly, ‘start without me.’

While Sirius waits, he thinks about how Remus had given him a kind-hearted but firm talking to about drinking alone at Grimmauld Place. In fact, Remus’s exact words had been, ‘If you want to drink, you let me know, and we’ll do it together.’

At the time, he’d snarled, ‘I’m a grown man and I’ll decide to drink when I want.’

Remus, forever unimpressed by Sirius’s anger, had rolled his eyes. ‘Great, why don’t you go slam your door and yell about how you don’t have to listen to me because I’m not your real dad.’

Sirius had snarled some more at that, but, as much as he hates to admit it, Remus had been right. He shouldn’t drink alone; it had only been harming himself to imagine that drinking would in any way take away the empty space that he can sometimes feel at the centre of himself.

So when things get to be too much – which has been getting less all the time since then – they have gotten drunk together, and it has been much better. Remus, for example, almost always remembers to drink water alongside the whisky, and to remind Sirius to do it too, which is good, because Sirius _hates_ to be hungover. And although that empty space seems permanent, he’s learned to build a fence around it with the two people that make him feel not so alone: Harry and Remus.  Sometimes he thinks he could even conjure a Patronus again, if he had to, although it’s not something that he’s attempted since Azkaban. The other Order members dance around asking him to do it and he’s let them assume he can’t rather than have yet another awkward conversation about the time he was in prison.

Remus returns from the shop with a bottle of tequila which he shows to the camera as he seats himself before the computer again.

‘Wow, aren’t you the poshest,’ Sirius says, staring.

‘It was the best thing they had going down there,’ Remus says. ‘I mean, it was a Muggle shop, so no firewhisky.’As Sirius watches, he twists the cap, which pops as he breaks the seal. He takes a whiff and winces. ‘Smells like paint thinner. So, let’s get this party started.’ He lifts the bottle to his lips and takes a sip. ‘Oh Jesus Christ, I have made bad choices in life.’

‘If choosing tequila was one of those choices,’ Sirius says, conjuring a tumbler and pouring himself a slug of the firewhisky, ‘then it doesn’t surprise me that the others were bad too.’

‘The shopkeeper tried to sell me Jaeger, but this was cheaper, and I’m not a nineteen year old uni student.’ Remus takes another sip, wincing all the while. ‘Oh my god, why didn’t I buy a chaser?’

Sirius, having just swallowed the whisky and still feeling it burn down his throat, finds himself fascinated by the way that Remus’s lips are now red and shiny from the liquid on them. He remembers his primary objective, sees his opening, pauses to think that he’s very good at playing the game even after all these years, and says, ‘You don’t need a chaser if you’re going to do a shot.’

Remus gives Sirius a look of pure alarm. ‘Shots?’

‘Shots.’

Remus takes another sip, winces again, and says, ‘What the fuck, it’ll dull the taste buds faster.’

They each take a shot, and then another. The whisky really starts to hit Sirius, and he can tell that the drink is hitting Remus too from the way that his friend starts leaning forward, chin resting on his hands, relaxed and laughing a little too much.

‘I don’t actually like firewhisky that much anymore,’ Remus confesses. ‘Too many rough nights with it when we were younger.’

Sirius laughs. ‘Like James with butterbeer after the Yule Ball in seventh year?’

Remus starts to giggle. Sirius catches himself thinking that it’s absurdly cute and, in his tipsy state, decides to let the thought slide. ‘Oh god, I know that we don’t like Peter anymore, but that night produced one of his greatest one liners.’

‘What did he say? I think I was too busy trying to contain the… situation.’

Remus giggles harder. ‘I remember he was off trying to pull that girl Lisa…’

Sirius reaches back into memory, summons up a hazy image of a young witch in Ravenclaw robes. ‘The one with the crazy eyes?’

‘That’s the one,’ Remus confirms. ‘But Peter thought he had a shot with her.’

Sirius squints, still trying to remember her. ‘He did, didn’t he? Wasn’t she the one who let him go under the shirt but not under the bra?’

Remus’s giggles turn into full on laughter. ‘I cannot _believe_ some of the stupid things that teenagers do.’

‘Or the stupid things people will do in pursuit of sex,’ Sirius suggests, gripping his tumbler and struggling against irony.

Remus nods. ‘So Peter came back into the room just as James was in the middle of his… eruption…’

Sirius starts to giggle now too. ‘And it smelled like butterbeer too, that was the worst part!’

‘… And Peter was kind of swaying in the doorway, and he put both his hands on top of his head like he was going to tear his hair out, and I just remember he had this crazed look – like seeing what was happening was literally driving him insane—‘

Sirius is giggling even harder at the recollection: he can picture Peter’s face perfectly, the horror written all over it, ‘And James’s face…’ he gasps, ‘he was just so… bewildered. Like he was thinking, “How can this be happening? Who is doing this awful thing and why is it happening in front of me?”’

Remus has to put his head down on the table. ‘And Peter, Peter says in this tone of just complete and utter dismay, “How does a human body lose that much liquid and not die?”’

They both lose it then and sit giggling and gasping and wiping tears of laughter out of their eyes, until Sirius, now thoroughly engrossed in Remus, decides to try his last, best gambit. He puts his hands on the table to steady himself and says, ‘Let’s play a drinking game.’

‘Is the game called “take shots until you get fucked up?”’ Remus asks, massaging his ribs. ‘Because I think we’re winning.’

‘Let’s do a broom race,’ Sirius says. He conjures up two more shot glasses in a row in front of the computer.

‘What happens to the loser?’ Remus asks. ‘Also, for the love of god, can we please use half shots? Remember what I’m drinking here.’

‘We’ve all got to make the bed we lie in,’ Sirius says sagely. ‘Or something like that, anyway. But sure, half shots is a good idea.’ He doesn’t want anyone to get _too_ drunk too early.

Remus conjures and lines up his own shot glasses. ‘So? Penalty?’

‘Loser,’ Sirius says, and his tongue is thick in his mouth, so that he has to pronounce each word precisely, ‘loses an article of clothing.’

‘You’re a bastard,’ Remus informs him, and for a second Sirius is worried that Remus is really mad. Then he starts pouring out his shots and when Sirius gapes at him, he says, ‘Looks like you’re going to be first to lose then, hm?’

Sirius does indeed lose the first round. He tries to get through it by taking off one sock, but Remus – jabbing a finger at the screen so hard that it temporarily knocks the camera askew and he has to fix it – informs him that two socks together count as a single item of clothing. Sirius can’t fault him; his logic is impeccable. After all, if the point of the game is to get naked, the fewer articles of clothing there are, the faster that can happen.

Unfortunately for Sirius, what he’s forgotten is that Remus is very, very good at drinking. He’s not sure how he’s forgotten it; he doesn’t have enough fingers to count the number of times that Remus had cleaned up after the other three Marauders as a result of a drinking game. Three races later and Sirius is wearing nothing but a pair of black boxer briefs. Then Remus loses one, and his socks; another, and he unbuttons his shirt, all the self-consciousness from the night before gone as he throws it backwards over his shoulder. The light on his nightstand falls over as the shirt lands atop it.

‘Moony,’ Sirius snaps, ‘are you losing on purpose?’

‘Damn,’ Remus snaps his fingers in front of the screen, ‘caught out.’

‘How are you not drunk?’ Sirius demands. ‘Oh right, something something werewolf metabolism.’

‘I’m drunk,’ Remus says, indignant. ‘Just not as drunk as you.’

Sirius pours out his new shots, sloshing whisky everywhere – including onto the keyboard, and that’s probably not good for it – and slams them back while Remus watches. ‘You. Lose.’

‘Fine,’ Remus says. ‘Fine.’ He stands up and then all the camera shows is his midsection, his muscular stomach and the scars there and the hair that leads down, down to places Sirius is suddenly thinking about in the way that African explorers must have thought of dark jungles before there were any maps, and Remus’s hands unbutton his trousers, and Sirius thinks they might be shaking a little, and suddenly he’s more turned on that he’s been in, well, fifteen years. Remus’s hands tug down the trousers and then he kicks them off. Sirius sees the long muscles of his thighs and the tight bulge in his navy blue briefs and without thinking he puts a hand out to touch the screen as Remus sits back down in front of the computer.

For a long moment, Remus looks at Sirius’s hand, and Sirius looks at Remus, and his heart beats like the wings of a bird trapped against a window pane.

Then Remus looks directly into Sirius’s eyes, and says, ‘Piqued your interest the other day, did I?’

That directness is sexy as hell. ‘Fuck yes,’ he slurs.

Remus’s eyes gleam. ‘Last shot,’ he says.

Sirius cannot believe that that is Remus’s response. ‘Really?’

‘Finish the game,’ Remus says, the very picture of patience, but there’s something else underneath that, a thrill, a tremor, and Sirius can sense it even across the gulf of distance that separates them, and he suddenly realises that he’s had an erection – a proper, hang-your-flag-on-it, hammer-in-some-nails-with-it, cut-through-diamonds-with-it erection – for the last few minutes. He wonders if Remus can see it.

Hands shaking, he pours out his whisky as Remus pours out his tequila. Sirius drops the second one onto the carpet and Remus waits, his first shot pressed to his lips, while Sirius fumbles and recovers and pours and redoes, and only then does Remus do his shot.

‘You’re trying to get me drunk,’ Sirius accuses him, and Remus raises his eyebrows.

‘Are you fucking taking the piss?’ he demands. ‘You set up an ambush to _get me naked_. If that’s not “trying to get me drunk”, then I don’t know what is.’ He sets down the glass and says, ‘Turnabout’s a bitch, Padfoot. So, you’re getting naked now, right?’

Sirius would be annoyed if he could think about anything except Remus touching his cock, but luckily he can’t, because he doesn’t really want to be annoyed. Mostly he wants his cock to get touched. By Remus. Right now. He stands up unsteadily, leans against the chair, and then turns around to pull off the briefs. He bends over and tosses them to the side, hoping he’s giving some kind of show, and also hoping that it isn’t the kind of show where the grotesquery of the situation leads to vomiting or upset.

When he turns back, his erection now in full view, he sees that he need not have worried. Remus is staring at him, his eyes wider than Sirius has ever seen them. Slowly, knowing that he’s drunk, and would never ever do this sober, but also completely unable to stop himself, Sirius puts a hand to his collarbone and then trails it down the front of his body to his cock. On the screen, he can see Remus take a visible breath in, and that spurs him on to wrap his fingers around his shaft and give it a lazy tug.

Remus licks his lips.

The gesture is so off hand sexy that Sirius’s knees feel like they’ll buckle beneath him. He sits back on the chair and Remus says, very quietly, ‘Can you tilt the camera?’

‘Sure,’ Sirius says. His voice shakes. He pauses, adjusts the camera and then wraps his fingers around himself again. ‘Oh,’ he breathes. He can’t stop himself from making noise. ‘Oh, oh, fuck.’

‘How long has it been?’ Remus asks, breathless.

‘Fifteen years.’

Remus takes in another sharp breath. Sirius strokes again, trying to savour it. Then Remus says, ‘I’m going to take off my pants.’

Sirius watches him. He’s struck by the sudden and intense desire to bury his face into Remus’s neck and smell him. Remus takes off his briefs and leans back in his chair. Sirius sees, very clearly, that Remus is aroused too. Sirius isn’t exactly an expert but he’s pretty sure that what Remus has lying against his thigh is a Big Cock. It makes his mouth go dry; it makes a ringing noise start in his head. He doesn’t remember sex being quite so alarming or quite so urgent before. This is a need, not a want, and it feels like drowning to be so far apart.

‘If you were here,’ he says, and trails off, distracted as Remus takes a sip of the tequila and then runs his hand from the shining head of his erect cock down to his balls.

‘What would you want me to do to you?’ Remus asks, and his voice is octaves lower, and Sirius can barely handle it, it’s so fucking sexy.  

‘What would you do?’ he counters, because he suspects that if Remus were here, now, he’d be overwhelmed and would fall back onto the couch in a swoon.

Remus’s eyes flash again, and Sirius sees something predatory there that he’s never seen before. It makes him even harder, makes the atmosphere in the room heavier and hotter and sweatier. He wants Remus to hunt him, to pin him to the ground and have his way with him.

‘I’d suck your cock,’ says Remus neatly.

Sirius thinks his head might actually implode. Up until this moment, he could never ever have imagined Remus saying those words to anyone, least of all him; now he feels like he can’t live without hearing it again. Apparently Remus talking dirty is his fetish. He takes a deep, shaky breath, looks at Remus’s red, wet mouth. ‘I bet you’d be good at it.’

‘Mm,’ Remus says. ‘I’d love to run my tongue around your tip before I swallowed you whole.’

Sirius is unconsciously clenching his free hand into a fist. A passing thought – _how embarrassing would it be to actually pass out from lust_ – floats through his mind like a cloud. ‘I want to feel your mouth,’ he manages, and he puts his free hand onto the screen and runs it across where Remus’s lips are. ‘I want…’

‘Do you want to fuck my mouth?’ Remus asks. He slides his other hand – and the fingers are so long, just looking at them is doing things to Sirius’s imagination – down the length of his body and into the nest of curls around his cock.

‘I want that to be my hand,’ Sirius says, and Remus smiles then, but it’s not your standard Remus-Lupin-is-a-nice-man smile. It’s a hungry one. It makes Sirius’s heart stutter in his chest. He wants to make him smile like that more. ‘I want to make you come,’ he says, and Remus says, still in that low voice, ‘If you come, I’ll come.’

Sirius grips himself and says, ‘This is going to either take an hour or a second, I’m warning you, it’s been a long time.’

‘Just imagine me kneeling in front of you,’ Remus says, and his voice vibrates down Sirius’s body. ‘Imagine me kneeling in between your thighs.’

Sirius comes all over his hand like he’s thirteen again. The sensation is too much. He slumps over so that his head is resting on the desk and looks sideways at the screen to watch Remus stroke himself to climax. Nearly a minute passes as they both catch their breath – they’re both breathing hard, like they’ve run a race – and then Remus puts his hand – presumably not the one most recently involved in the spill on aisle three – against the camera, as if to touch him. Sirius puts his own hand up against Remus’s and promptly passes the fuck out. 


	5. The worst hangover of Sirius’s life occurred at a cricket match. He sobered up from the night before sometime in the third over, and spent the next fifteen overs vomiting in the toilets of Lords.

Sirius wakes up with his hair stuck to the keyboard and the stench of firewhisky in his nose. For several bleary seconds, he has absolutely no idea what is going on; then he has a sudden flash of memory, of the shots and the whisky spilling and of Remus –

He sits bolt upright and that’s a huge mistake, so he slithers out of the chair where he’s been sleeping doubled over for god knows how long – it’s fully light out now, so it’s been many hours – and lies down on the floor, trying not to vomit from the hangover but also trying not to hyperventilate because things last night had certainly _escalated_ and fuck, he wants it to escalate some more.

Somehow, he falls asleep again on the floor, and when he wakes up, he can tell that a few more hours have passed and his hangover has abated somewhat. He sits up and takes stock. One half of his head is completely sticky and smells of firewhisky; he’s not wearing any clothes; another part of his body is also very sticky but firewhisky is not the culprit; and the laptop is still humming. And, oh, right, he and Remus had wanked off together last night via the internet and the thought of it makes him feel hot, sweaty, and sick – then again, that might just be the hangover coming back. He pushes himself up and looks at the screen. Remus is not online and there are no messages.

‘Are you joking?’ he demands of the computer. This is classic Moony. He’s probably decided the situation is too awkward, and now Sirius has to wait three more days and get him drunk once again if he wants to try to resolve any of this. He’s a patient man, he reminds himself, but it’s been a whole night and part of a day now, and that’s more than enough time for Remus to have thought of whatever objections he is sure to bring up, and Sirius wants to get that out of the way so they can continue wanking off together.

He clicks onto Remus’s name – grey because he’s offline – and Remus’s information pops up on screen. He has a grey generic outline as a profile picture, but it does say that he is in GMT and then provides an eleven-digit number starting with zero-seven. Sirius stares at it for a minute, trying to think what it might be – a unique identifier? An amount of time? He hovers the mouse over it, and Skype asks him, ‘Call this phone?’

‘Oooh,’ Sirius says, and he remembers now that Remus has a mobile phone. It hadn’t worked in Grimmauld Place – something about magic and a lack of signal, he hadn’t listened too closely to the explanation – but the phone is a relic from when Remus worked with Muggles anyway, back before he came to Hogwarts to be a professor. Sirius has no idea if it still works, but he desperately wants to know. He clicks on the ‘call’ button but receives an error: his account balance is zero pounds and he cannot make calls to phones.

He gets up and takes a hot shower, scrubbing the whisky out of his hair and the sticky out of his unmentionables and pondering this development. He does not know how to increase his account balance, but he knows that mobile phones can be called from other mobile phones – and he also knows that they are kind of like rapid fire owls, so any messages he sends on one will reach Remus quite quickly. He gets out of the shower, towels off, and checks on his stash of Muggle money. There’s a Muggle credit card in Remus’s name, but he pays the bills – it’s just in Remus’s name due to his being a formerly wanted prisoner and the lack of enthusiasm that the Lloyd’s employee had displayed upon learning that he was thirty-seven years old and had never had a bank account (well, not a Muggle one anyhow). He picks up the credit card and, as he dresses, stuffs it into his pocket.

He walks into Oxford city centre via the marshy area known as Mesopotamia so deep in thought that he nearly gets run over by three cyclists. He is starting – after reviewing last night’s events with a level of detail that makes him keep his eyes downcast in case anyone in the vicinity is a practising Occlumens – to think that this isn’t just about sex.

Before he’d gone to Azkaban, Sirius had, in his immature, twenty year old way, envied James and Lily’s love. He’d wanted to be in love like that, but he’d never felt more than a brief spark with any of the women he’d dated. The most important relationships in his life had been his friendships. He had been loyal to those to a degree that many people would have found absurd. He’d loved his friends so much; maybe it’s not such a terrible stretch to think that he’s a little bit _in love_ with the last of those friends.

Then again, he thinks as he finds himself at the head of the street that divides Oxford’s shopping district, maybe he’s just been very, very lonely for a very long time.

Stalling, he goes to get a tea. It’s a lovely day and he sits outside a café, watching students and shoppers bustle past and listening to the strains of a busker doing a bad job of covering a Radiohead song.

Remus had moved into his flat after James had moved out to get married to Lily. The summer before, Remus had finished a degree from the magical college at Oxford, St Anselm’s, but academic work was scarce, particularly for a werewolf, and, as the war became more serious, being in the Order had become a full time job. Remus made rent somehow – a combination of odd jobs – but frankly Sirius wouldn’t have cared if Remus had freeloaded and eaten all his food too, because he’d liked the company. Remus was a very different kind of flatmate from James: both more serious and more clean, but also a wonderful person to sit and talk with through the late hours over a cup of tea.

And then Remus had been almost impossibly good as a friend after Azkaban; he’d been there for Sirius when Sirius had thought he would go crazy with grief and depression; he’d helped Sirius to be a good godfather; he’d given Sirius a place to live when he was a wanted man at great personal risk and, when Sirius had realised that Grimmauld Place was the best place to go, Remus had seen the look on his face and had volunteered to move in with him without hesitation. He’d endured Kreacher’s veiled – and not so veiled – insults, the various dark enchanted objects in the house, and the screamed slurs of the portrait of Sirius’s mother in the entryway. When Sirius had thought he’d go crazy again, there Remus had been, always stepping in, diffusing any situation with his calm voice and presence, the mediating presence between Sirius and the world. Somewhere along the way, Sirius realises, Remus has become indispensable to him.

What makes up his mind is a recent memory. After the battle in the Ministry, he’d been in the hospital unconscious for two weeks. The last thing he remembers of the battle is the jet of red coming out of Bellatrix’s wand and knocking him backwards, and then he had woken up, in a quiet, white room, and the first thing he’d seen was Remus. His friend had been asleep, slumped in a chair, dark circles under his eyes and his hair mussed. One hand had rested on the bed against Sirius’s own hand. Sirius had said – well, more croaked – his name, and Remus, previously known for his ability to sleep through the noise generated by a World Cup Quidditch match, had flown awake and grabbed Sirius’s hand.

‘I thought you would die,’ he’d kept saying, blinking back tears and squeezing Sirius’s hand to the point of pain. Sirius had squeezed his hand back despite, so incredibly grateful, and had said, ‘Thanks for being here,’ because he couldn’t imagine what it would have been like to wake up in that situation alone. Remus had stayed by Sirius’s side as Healers came and explained things, as Kingsley Shacklebolt came in with an official pardon from the Ministry, as Dumbledore and McGonagall had come in to congratulate him – a calming presence in a sea of swirling changes. He’d only left when Harry had come, and Sirius had gotten the impression that Remus had waited outside the entire time that he and Harry had talked.

‘Remus has been looking after you,’ Harry had said.

 _Yes,_ Sirius thinks now, _and I want him to keep doing that. I think I need him to keep doing that._ He finishes his tea and heads into the shopping mall where they’d bought the laptop. There’s a desk near the entrance labelled “Information”, so he approaches it. A bored-looking woman is varnishing her nails bright pink behind it.

‘Excuse me,’ he says, and she looks up and sighs.

‘Can I help you?’

‘Yes,’ he says, ‘I was wondering where I could buy a mobile phone.’

She gives him a hard look and twists in her seat, pointing. ‘There’s a Three store, a Vodafone, a T-Mobile, a Carphone Warehouse, an O2 store, and I think there’s another Three store around the corner.’

‘Wonderful,’ Sirius says. He looks around at his plethora of choices and heads to Three, it being the closest. Once inside, a saleswoman approaches him with a smile and asks, ‘Can I help?’

‘Yes,’ he says, pulling out the sheet of paper on which he’s written Remus’s number. ‘I need a mobile phone that will let me reach this number.’

She squints at the paper, and then at him. ‘It’s a UK mobile number,’ she says.

‘Yes, I think so,’ Sirius agrees.

‘So… any one of our phones will call it.’

‘Oh,’ Sirius says, pleasantly surprised. ‘Wonderful. Which one do you think I should buy?’

She blinks. ‘Do you want texting and internet?’

‘I don’t know,’ Sirius says, smiling at her. ‘Mostly I want to be able to call this number, but I can see those things coming in handy, I suppose. Well, I’m not sure what texting is. Is it taking notes?’

She blinks again. ‘Is this a joke?’ she asks.

‘Pardon?’ Sirius asks, not understanding.

‘Am I about to be on telly?’

‘Not that I know of,’ Sirius says, now thoroughly confused. Admittedly he doesn’t know much about Muggle telly aside from the IT Crowd, but he doesn’t quite see how her question follows.

‘You don’t know what texting is?’

‘No…’

‘How is that possible?’

Remus had once told him that the key to being a successful liar is to only lie when necessary; always tell the truth when you can. ‘I was in prison for twelve years,’ he says now, and when her eyebrows shoot up he adds, ‘Also I’m a wizard.’

She bursts into laughter. ‘Oh my god,’ she says, ‘you’re too good looking to be crazy.’

Some small part of Sirius thinks, _I’ve still got it_. Another part of him thinks, _I hope Remus knows that_. ‘I didn’t realise the two were mutually exclusive.’

‘So tell me about this number you want to call,’ she says. ‘Are you in the mafia? Do you want a throw away phone for some criminal purpose?’

‘No,’ Sirius says, and then he hesitates. ‘It belongs to a… a man.’

Her eyes go wide. ‘A man who you fancy?’ she suggests.

Sirius actually feels himself blushing and isn’t that embarrassing – he’s going through some kind of appalling midlife crisis and this is all Remus’s fault, and he hates him, except the worst part is that he doesn’t at all – and he says, ‘Yes, you could say that.’

‘Crazy _and_ gay,’ she says, and sighs. ‘I guess that means you’re off the market.’

‘Probably,’ Sirius admits, both to himself and her. ‘Here’s hoping.’

Thirty minutes later he walks out the door with a new mobile phone that she has kindly activated for him. He walks back to the University Parks and sits on a bench by the duck pond. She had shown him how to send a text message, so he types one out to Remus rather than calling him – he doesn’t want to interrupt anything that Remus might be doing, and he’s also feeling increasingly nervous. He’s been thinking about what to text since he left the shop.

Now, he types out his magnum opus. ‘You wanking bastard, are you playing hard to get? – Pad.’

A few seconds later, the phone buzzes, and he reads:  ‘Since when did you get a phone? Not playing hard to get, promise.’

Painstakingly, he types, ‘Got it just now so I could talk to you. – Pad.’

The phone buzzes almost instantly. ‘You don’t have to sign your name you know, I can see who you are from the number.’

He grins. ‘Clever clogs.’

‘Of course I am.’

‘Can we talk?’

There’s a longer pause this time. Then, ‘I have something I have to do tonight. Will call after. Probably very late. Sorry.’

‘Don’t be sorry,’ Sirius says aloud. He texts back, ‘Very much looking forward to it. Yours, Padfoot.’

Hours later, as he’s eating his takeaway korma and sitting in the garden, the phone buzzes again. He looks down at it and smiles.

‘Sweet of you to have gotten phone. Call you in a few hours.’


	6. Although he’s a wizard through and through, sometimes Remus can’t help but enjoy the ease with which mobile phones can be used for booty calls.

Remus doesn’t call until after two in the morning. Sirius has fallen asleep on the chair again and the tinny Skype ringing sound wakes him with a start. He puts on the headphones so he can hear Remus’s voice better and answers. Remus’s face appears, and even across the internet, Sirius can tell that he is exhausted.

‘Rough day?’ he asks, instantly worried.

Remus is gazing off to his left, but he nods. ‘Long, long day,’ he says. He glances at Sirius and smiles quickly. ‘Didn’t help that I was feeling so rough after last night.’

Sirius winces sympathetically. ‘I know the feeling, but I wasn’t doing anything too important.’

‘It’s ok,’ Remus says, and he goes back to gazing to the left.

They sit in silence for a moment, and then Sirius says, ‘So tell me about today.’

‘Remember the werewolf who I said hexed me?’

‘David?’

Remus nods. ‘He decided to join Voldemort’s side today. I tried to talk him out of it this evening and it didn’t go particularly well.’

Sirius hesitates, and then goes on a hunch. ‘So when you said you were friends…’

Remus looks back at Sirius and narrows his eyes. ‘Not for a long time, Sirius.’

‘Not for a long time what?’ Sirius asks, unable to stop himself, even though he thinks he knows the answer.

Remus sighs. ‘We haven’t been lovers in a long time.’

Sirius feels like Remus has just plunged a hot knife into his stomach. Something must show on his face, because Remus says, ‘I really do mean a long time, Padfoot. Not since before James and Lily were married.’

That doesn’t make Sirius feel better. ‘You never told me,’ he starts, but he doesn’t know where he’s going with it. Never told him that he was gay? Never told him that he’d had a lover?

‘No,’ Remus says. He sighs and runs a hand down his face. ‘Maybe I should have. Peter knew. He even tried to imply it to you once, I think to cast suspicion on me – I mean, I think that in retrospect, of course. At the time I just thought that he was telling you about something he thought you already knew.’

‘What did he say? How did he know?’

‘Peter knew because he’s more observant than we ever gave him credit for,’ Remus says. ‘I’m sure that wherever he is now, he’s holed up just watching.’

‘Like a little rat in a cubby hole,’ Sirius snarls.

‘Exactly. So I remember him saying something to you about me spending time with other werewolves, but you didn’t really respond to him, so I think he dropped it.’

Sirius remembers now, a long conversation he and Peter had had about why Remus should not be James and Lily’s secret keeper. ‘Well, that’s all water under the bridge now,’ he says, pushing it aside with an effort. ‘Was everything all right tonight?’

Remus smiles at him, a small but clearly genuine smile. ‘I can’t believe that you just let that go,’ he says. ‘I feel like you’ve come so far as a person.’

‘I’m trying to be better,’ Sirius replies, feeling a bit sulky that Remus is making fun of him but also secretly appreciating the smile. ‘You told me to stop dwelling on things.’

Remus is still smiling. ‘I had no idea you listened to me.’

‘I do,’ Sirius pouts, and Remus says, ‘Oh, Padfoot, I’m sorry.’

Something about the way he says it makes the ache in Sirius’s stomach ease, just a little. ‘Tell me about tonight.’

Remus looks to the side again. ‘I was speaking with some other werewolves. It’s the midpoint between full moons so they’re particularly active. We were at this club where lots of dark creatures congregate and David showed up and said he wanted to talk to me.’ Sirius watches him speak, fascinated by this insight into an underground world he knows nothing of, and sees him pause now, and purse his lips. ‘He was quite nervous. He wanted me to go somewhere private with him.’ Remus stops talking again.

‘Did you sense danger?’ Sirius asks quietly, and Remus nods.

‘I knew something was off based on how nervous he was. I went with him, though. I feel – felt – quite confident that I could take care of myself.’

‘Oh Moony,’ Sirius breathes without meaning to, ‘please be careful.’

Remus looks at him then, and Sirius sees the dark circles under his eyes and aches to wrap his arms around him. ‘I’m not very good at being careful,’ Remus confesses. ‘I’ve never felt that anyone… well, anyway, he wanted me to join him.’ Remus looks down at his hands, resting on the desk, and adds, ‘Apparently he’d been thinking about our past and wanted to give it another go.’

‘But you turned him down,’ Sirius says, too quickly. Remus’s mouth quirks and he looks up at Sirius with a strange look that Sirius can’t read.

‘I did,’ he says. ‘I told him I wasn’t going to become the pet of some Death Eater, and that he should respect himself more than to do that as well. And I told him that I wasn’t interested in him, either. We had another argument and he left.’ He hesitates and seems to steel himself.  ‘I… I want you to add his name to the list of known Death Eaters.’

Sirius is barely paying attention to that. He asks the question that feels like it’s suffocating him. ‘Did you mean it? That you weren’t interested in him?’

‘Yes,’ Remus says, and Sirius feels like a hand unwraps from around his throat. ‘It’s been such a long time. Of course I feel kind of that old melancholy that goes with a past lover but…’

Sirius doesn’t really know that feeling, although he suspects that it’s similar to how he’s been feeling all day, but he nods. ‘But you’re ok? Now, I mean?’

‘Urgh,’Remus says, and puts his head down on the desk. ‘I don’t know. Everything is a mess here. This mission was hard fifteen years ago and it’s hard now.’ He looks up, resting his chin on his fist, and says, ‘Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate that Albus thinks that dark creatures are salvageable and should be included in our side of the war, but you’d be hard pressed to find one of them aside from me that feels inclined to do anything associated with the Ministry, and there doesn’t seem to be any way of getting around that.’

‘I wish I knew some way to help,’ Sirius says, and he’s not just being polite – he means it, desperately. He’s prepared to do anything to take that tired, hopeless look off of Remus’s face.

‘Talking to you is nice,’ Remus says with a little smile.

Sirius smiles back. ‘Now you know how I feel.’

‘What do you mean?’

Sirius tries to articulate one of the many things he’s been thinking all day. ‘Sometimes I feel like there’s no one else on earth who I can just… share a joke with. I feel like everyone else walks on eggshells around me.’

Remus laughs. ‘Story of my life.’

‘But Moony,’ Sirius says, ‘I mean it. There’s no one like you.’ He puts his own head down on the table. ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck.’

‘Are we about to have a Conversation?’ Remus asks. ‘Should I retrieve the tequila?’

‘I don’t know,’ Sirius mumbles, miserable. ‘I’m shit at this.’

‘What’s this?’ Remus asks, and Sirius sits upright and glares.

‘You know what I mean,’ he snaps. ‘You told me earlier today you weren’t playing hard to get.’

To his intense annoyance, Remus laughs. ‘If you want to have more cyber sex or whatever the Muggles are calling it these days, I promise you I won’t play hard to get.’

Sirius opens his mouth, shuts it, and then opens it again and says, ‘Cyber sex? What?’

Remus makes a rude gesture. ‘Over the internet, you know.’

‘For fuck’s sake,’ Sirius says, exasperated. ‘You don’t think that’s weird?’

Remus is clearly trying to suppress a smile. ‘I think our friendship went beyond weird a _very_ long time ago.’

‘Stop humouring me,’ Sirius snarls. He wants to lift his lip and growl, but Remus has always been immune to that kind of threat. He knows Sirius is all bark when it comes to him. ‘I’m going through a real crisis here,’ he adds, and it comes out so pathetically that Remus stops looking amused.

‘What is the crisis?’ he asks. ‘I already said, if you want to wank off together, I’m up for it.’

Sirius feels absurd as he says, ‘What about our friendship? I don’t want to ruin our friendship.’

To his intense annoyance, Remus actually laughs at him. ‘I promise you, Sirius, that us wanking off together via Skype is not even in the top… I don’t even know, top one hundred of ways that our friendship could have been ruined.’

Sirius frowns. ‘What else is on that list?’ he demands.

Remus gives him an incredulous look. ‘Well, let’s see. How about the time that we each suspected the other of being a spy, all of our friends wound up dead or at least we believed they were dead, and you went to prison while I left the UK and wandered around the world for twelve years, trying and mostly failing to outrun my grief? That’s probably number one for me. That or the time that you lit my favourite Clash t-shirt on fire when I wouldn’t let you borrow it.’

‘Oh, fuck you. I bought you a new fucking t-shirt when I saw how upset you were about it.’

‘You bought me a t-shirt from the _wrong fucking band_ , you twat.’

Sirius feels a burning in the back of his throat like he’s about to start crying. He’s suddenly breathing in short bursts. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says, and he tries and fails to keep it together, ‘I’m sorry for everything,’ and suddenly he’s crying, his chest heaving, struggling to breathe.

Remus’s smile vanishes. He presses his hand against the screen. ‘Padfoot, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t joke about that.’

Sirius gasps and puts his hand up against the screen and says, ‘I really do hate you sometimes.’

‘You should,’ Remus says. ‘I’m really crap at emotions.’

‘No fucking shit.’ Sirius swallows hard and rubs his eyes angrily. He hates that he’s crying right now, hates that he’s crying in front of someone, but sometimes he can’t stop himself. Remus ought to be used to it by now, he’s such a fucking shitshow all the time and Remus is always the one who is there to pick up the pieces. ‘I hate this. I hate being sad and I hate how easy it is to be sad and I hate being sad in front of you.’

‘Don’t,’ Remus says quietly. ‘Don’t hate the last one.’

Sirius looks up at him, mouth squeezed shut in an effort to pull himself together. Remus looks back at him, and there’s no trace of humour on his face. Sirius counts to ten and thinks he can speak again.

‘The thing is,’ he says, trying to keep his voice from wavering, ‘I think that it’s more than just sex.’

Remus’s face gets a closed off look and his eyes focus on the middle distance. ‘Yeah, you’re probably right.’

‘But I’m worried,’ Sirius admits, ‘that I’m just lonely and reaching out to the person who is kindest to me.’

Remus looks back at him. There’s something intense in his eyes now. ‘I think that’s how a lot of these kinds of things get started.’

They look at each other some more. Sirius is trying to reconcile the friendship they’ve always had, the face before him, more familiar than any other, the worried lines around his eyes and the greying hair and the kindest set to a mouth that he’s ever known, with the immense and helpless feeling of love that is crowding out everything else.

‘You know what I love about you?’ he asks, and Remus inhales sharply. ‘I mean,’ he adds, ‘besides everything. But what I love about you right now?’

Remus’s face is still closed off as he asks, ‘What’s that?’

‘You never act like I’m crazy.’

‘I don’t think you are.’

Sirius hesitates. ‘I didn’t… I’m not all…’

‘Not all right?’ Remus asks softly. ‘I know that. How could you be? But that doesn’t mean that your feelings are somehow invalid.’

‘Oh Moony,’ Sirius whispers. He’s suddenly overwhelmed by a longing whose tug feels deeper than a riptide at the shore. _Fuck caution_ , he thinks, and so he says, ‘I wish I could kiss you.’

Remus hesitates for only a second, and then he says, ‘I wish that too.’

They press their hands together against the screen and Sirius says, ‘I bet you’d be wonderful to kiss.’

‘I haven’t shaved,’ Remus says, and he runs his other hand along his jaw. ‘Do you want to kiss stubble?’

‘It sounds sexy,’ Sirius says, and he means it. He’s suddenly aching with need. ‘Last night was incredible, you know.’

‘It was,’ Remus agrees. ‘It…’he hesitates, and then speaks quickly. ‘It felt like two decades of sexual tension coming out.’ He looks down and then up at Sirius through his eyelashes. ‘You have such nice hands,’ he whispers, tracing along the screen. ‘I wish I could suck on your fingers.’

‘I wish you would,’ Sirius whispers back. ‘I wish I could take your clothes off.’

Remus shivers. ‘It would be hard,’ he says, hand still caressing the screen, ‘with your fingers in my mouth.’

‘A lot more than the undressing would be hard,’ Sirius says, and Remus laughs and says, ‘You can never let a penis joke go, can you?’

‘I just wanted to remind you,’ Sirius says innocently, ‘that you’re making my cock incredibly hard.’

Remus laughs again and says, ‘Trust me, I didn’t forget. I wish you could undress me. And I’d undress you.’

Sirius puts a hand up and slowly undoes the buttons on his shirt. Remus watches him, a hungry, breathless expression on his face. When Sirius is halfway down, Remus raises one of those perfect hands to his lips. Staring directly into Sirius’s eyes, he bites down on his index finger and then sucks it into his mouth. His cheeks hollow and there’s a flash of red tongue as he inserts his middle finger and sucks on that too. Any blood that might have been lingering in Sirius’s extremities migrates straight to his groin and he wonders if this is ever going to stop making him lightheaded or if that’s just how sex with Remus is. He lets his shirt fall to the ground and presses his hand down onto the cloth that covers his erection.

‘Oh,’ Remus breathes, taking his fingers out of his mouth for a second, ‘do remove those, would you?’

‘Only if you’ll remove yours.’ Sirius’s voice suddenly sounds like he’s been a lifelong smoker.

‘Do you want me to stop this?’ Remus asks, the picture of innocence as he takes his wet fingers and sucks them in again. Sirius wants to take them and rub them all over his body.

‘Only for a second,’ he breathes. ‘Only long enough to be naked for me.’

Remus takes his fingers out of his mouth and laughs. ‘Ok, quick, get naked break!’ he says, and Sirius laughs too and stands, yanking down his trousers and pants. He sits down again and finds that Remus has not moved; his fingers are still hovering near his mouth and his eyes are wide and he’s breathing so hard that Sirius can see his shoulders rising and falling.

‘What?’ he asks.

‘I fucking love your cock,’ Remus says in a rush. ‘God, I want to be touching it.’ Sirius makes a strangled noise that seems to encourage him. ‘I want to rub my face into it and then rub it all over my body. I want to suck on it until you come in my mouth.’

Sirius can’t hold in his moan. He leans back against the chair, shoving the palm of his hand down against his cock and pressing it into his thigh in an effort to stop himself from coming right there. ‘Fuck, fuck, I want you to, oh fuck I do.’ He takes several deep breaths and tries not to focus on the hungry look on Remus’s face because it’s going to make him come right now if he thinks too much about it. ‘Let me see you touch yourself,’ he says instead. ‘Show me how you like it.’

Remus removes his clothing with painstaking slowness. Even though Sirius knows what is coming now, his eyes follow every twitch of cloth and twist of button down the length of Remus’s body. ‘Wow,’ Remus says, breathless.

‘What?’ Sirius asks, chest heaving.

‘I have never,’ Remus bends down and tugs off his trousers and pants in one fluid motion, ‘understood the term “fuck me with your eyes” before now.’

‘I would if I could,’ Sirius says and Remus sits down hard and runs his hands over his body, starting from his shoulders and sliding down over his nipples – pausing there to give them a twist and moan aloud, the sound carrying through Sirius’s headphones and straight to his cock – and then moving them down further, stuttering across his skin, until he reaches his cock and wraps a hand around it.

‘What should I do to myself?’ he asks Sirius quietly.

Sirius has no idea where the idea comes from, but it’s suddenly imperative that he see it in action. ‘Put your fingers in your mouth,’ he commands.

Remus does it immediately. His entire body is a strained line, his muscles tense and flexed as he sucks two and then three fingers in and out until Sirius can see them gleam with wetness. Sirius wants to climb through the screen and press their bodies together; his mouth tastes metallic and empty as he says, ‘Now touch yourself.’

Remus promptly removes the fingers from his mouth and wraps them around his cock. Sirius can see the wetness there, and he rubs the head of his own cock urgently, swirling the wetness leaking from the tip, somehow caught up in the feeling that it is Remus’s mouth that has made him wet.

‘I wish I could suck on your cock until it was dripping,’ Remus says to him, watching him through heavy lidded eyes as he strokes up and down.

Sirius shudders. ‘I can’t think when you say things like that.’

‘Do you need to think right now?’

‘I’ve never in my life heard you advocate against thinking.’

Remus half-laughs, half-gasps, and then moans, ‘God, I wish you could be touching me.’

‘Yes,’ Sirius says, and he thinks of it, and then he says, ‘Oh, Moony, I can’t…’

‘Come for me, then,’ Remus says, and the command in his voice is so sexy that, with a single stroke, Sirius does. Remus watches him, still gasping, and then a few strokes later, he comes himself. After a few moments to catch their breath, they simultaneously lift their wands and say a cleaning charm.

Remus starts giggling. ‘Learned that charm in third year,’ he says.

‘Same,’ Sirius confesses. ‘James told it to me.’

Remus laughs harder. ‘Me too!’

‘I guess that’s what friends are for,’ Sirius says, and Remus giggles again and then shivers.

‘Hope the walls are thick in this bed and breakfast,’ he says, and they both dissolve into giggles again.

After a few minutes, though, the punch drunk atmosphere wears off.

‘So, what do you think?’ Sirius asks, suddenly very conscious that they’re both naked.

‘I…’ Remus hesitates. He stands to pull up his trousers and winces. ‘I think you should think some more about this.’

Sirius feels like a lead weight has sunk into his stomach. ‘Honestly?’

‘You said it yourself,’ Remus says, now putting his shirt back on. ‘You’re lonely.’

‘And you said that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t!’ Sirius scrambles to grab his clothing and pull it on, not wanting to be vulnerable.

‘I said that doesn’t mean that people don’t get together for that reason. What if someone better came along?’

Sirius snorts. ‘Like whom?’ he demands. ‘Who could be better for me than you?’

‘I don’t know,’ Remus snaps, and Sirius thinks there’s real pain behind his words, ‘a woman?’

‘I don’t care about that,’ he scoffs. ‘Does it seem like I do?’

‘There’s a big difference between seeing something five hundred miles away and… you know.’

‘Fucking?’ Sirius suggests, annoyed at Remus’s sudden prudishness. ‘Says the man who was just going on about sucking my cock?’

‘I’ve had sex with men,’ Remus says coldly. ‘You haven’t. And I didn’t hear you offering to suck mine.’

‘Well, at least give me a fucking chance,’ Sirius says, ‘and don’t mention the fucking pun either. Fuck!’ But Remus doesn’t look likely to bring that up. He looks somewhere between furious and very, very sad.

Sirius can never stop pushing, even when he’s long past the point where he should, so he asks. ‘Why don’t you just say that you aren’t interested and be done with it?’ When Remus doesn’t answer, Sirius is suddenly desperate, so he says, ‘I don’t even care if you want to have a, a, I don’t know, a relationship, Remus, I’ll do whatever you want, you can fuck me, anytime, I will suck your cock, I promise, just don’t, fucking, don’t…’

‘Padfoot,’ Remus interrupts, and he sounds very weary. ‘It’s not that. If you think about it, and decide that this is truly what you want, then I’ll consider it.’

‘Well, that’s very romantic,’ Sirius snaps.

Remus sighs, looks down, and says quietly, ‘Honestly? No, it’s not. But I’m thirty-seven years old, Sirius. I’ve been around the block a few more times than I wish I had been. I’ve been burned and had my heart broken and I’m cautious now. I’m sorry, that’s probably not what you wanted to hear, but…’

‘No,’ Sirius says, and now he feels terrible. ‘I just…’

‘The thing is,’ Remus says, looking up to meet his eyes and speaking over him, ‘there was a time when I thought that you and I might have something.’

‘Back when we were at school?’

‘After that,’ Remus says. ‘Mostly when I was living on your couch for a year.’ He pauses. ‘And especially after you tried to pull me at James’s stag do.’

‘Yeah, well,’ Sirius says, ‘I didn’t… know what to do. I felt awkward bringing it up in the sober light of day.’

‘Mm,’ Remus hums, ‘so you seem to have gotten over that, at any rate.’

‘Oh fuck you,’ Sirius says, but there’s no energy behind it. ‘Or rather,’ he adds, ‘I suppose, I wish I had.’

There’s a moment of silence, and then Remus says, ‘So why didn’t you?’

‘I don’t know if you remember, but James was kind of in need.’

‘I do remember. I’m the one who bleached his shirt in the kitchen sink.’

‘Well, I was a bit busy trying to get him to shower!’

Remus looks away and laughs, but when he looks back, he’s serious. ‘Do you really think two people who can start arguing about something that happened that long ago should be together?’

‘Sounds like we have a good foundation for a relationship,’ Sirius replies, and his heart speeds up as he says it.

‘Yes, arguing, the best basis.’

‘We’re not afraid to say what we want to each other. We’re always going to talk to each other.’

Remus smiles at him. His fingers, as they rest by the screen, uncurl and he touches what Sirius guesses must be where his own hand rests. He opens his hand and presses it there. Remus looks up at him and says, ‘So why didn’t you?’

‘It just felt… awkward. I don’t know. I’m an idiot, that’s why. I didn’t know what I wanted.’ Not meeting Remus’s eyes, he strokes his finger along the screen representation of Remus’s. ‘I do now. So why didn’t you?’

‘I…’ Remus hesitates. ‘A few things. One, I wasn’t keen on being weird in some new way. I’d only been with one man at that point. And two, I just thought that it was something that would happen over time. After I moved in with you, I felt like there was no way I would ever be moving out. I just couldn’t imagine either of us…’ He trails off, swallows, and Sirius has a sudden realisation about how awful things must have been for Remus, too.

‘Being apart?’ he asks into the silence that Remus has left.

‘Exactly,’ Remus says. He looks at Sirius and says, ‘I missed you most of all, you know. And that was the worst part, when I thought you were guilty, that I couldn’t stop missing you more than James or Lily or Peter.’ He suddenly looks like he’s going to cry. ‘Sirius, it’s four in the fucking morning. I need to sleep.’

‘Remus,’ Sirius says.

‘What?’

‘I don’t want you to hang up.’

Remus looks away and says, ‘Well, I’m too tired to keep talking. Sorry.’ He’s set his mouth into a tight line.

‘Can I text you tomorrow?’ Sirius asks, and Remus nods.

‘Of course,’ he says. ‘Goodnight.’

He disconnects before Sirius can say another word. 


	7. There’s a particular start to a song that Sirius hears in his head whenever he sees Remus. Maybe someday he’ll tell him what it is.

They don’t really speak for several weeks after that, though. Dumbledore ( _Albus,_ Sirius reminds himself, trying desperately to _grow up_ ) arrives the next morning and awakens Sirius from his perch on the couch to tell him that he’s needed for a mission. He only has time to text Remus to tell him he’ll be gone for a bit on a mission before he and four other Order members are dispatched to a remote corner of Britain with no mobile service, using Apparition despite the risk because of the urgency of the mission. They are all nearly killed by Death Eaters in an abandoned croft in northern Scotland, but they do manage to gather information about how the Death Eaters are encrypting their communications. Sirius spends the entire two weeks of the mission huddled in the damp cold, missing Remus so desperately that he feels like a phantom presence inside of him. Afterwards, at Hogwarts, Albus debriefs them and then they prepare to go their separate ways. Sirius is striding to the gates to Apparate and finally get to text Remus when McGonagall ( _Minerva!_ ) catches up to him.

‘Sirius,’ she says, a little out of breath. ‘Are you in contact with Remus?’

‘I was before we left for the mission,’ Sirius says, and suddenly his palms are sweating and his stomach is clenched. ‘Is something wrong? What’s happened?’

She shakes her head. ‘Nothing yet, Sirius. But I think that the werewolf colony he’s staying with is likely to be compromised by a double agent sometime soon – someone named David Smith.’

Sirius’s body goes cold, but he nods and thanks her. Somehow he manages to Apparate home to Oxford. Standing in the garden, he takes his phone out of his pocket and texts Remus: ‘Please come home.’

The reply buzzes against his leg two minutes later. ‘Why?’

‘I’m worried about you. Tip from Minerva.’

Remus’s reply leaves Sirius frantic: ‘I can take of myself.’ He paces the garden for a few minutes before the phone buzzes again. ‘Skype debrief tonight? Have information to pass along.’

Sirius types back with shaking fingers, ‘Ok. Be safe.’ 

That night, he starts up Skype, and Remus isn’t there. He waits and he waits, his stomach increasingly clenched, clutching at a tea cup and later his wand, but nothing happens; the little green face that means Remus is online never appears. Sirius finally unplugs the headphones, sets the speakers up as loud as they will go, and goes to the kitchen to find pen and paper. He will not panic, he will not panic, ok, he’s definitely panicking. He stands in the kitchen, trying to think about what to say and who to write and debating whether or not he should head to Glasgow and find the werewolves himself.

As he’s standing, indecisive, he can see out into the garden. He notices a flurry of movement and tightens his hand on his wand. Then he realises that someone has appeared just behind the mildewy frog pond that marks the back end of the garden. He raises his wand, prepared to defend himself, and then realises that Remus is standing in front of him.

His mind temporarily goes blank. ‘What are you doing here?’ he asks.

Remus steps forward, and Sirius sees that he has a black eye. He shoves his wand into his pocket and reaches out, and Remus stumbles into his arms, and suddenly they’re holding each other. Remus says in his ear, ‘Fuck the mission.’

‘What happened?’ Sirius demands. He’s running his hands over Remus’s arms and back, frantically searching for wounds. ‘How are you here right now? You shouldn’t have Apparated, that was very dangerous! And what happened to your face?’

‘Fight,’ Remus says wearily, and he extracts himself from Sirius’s arms. ‘And the full moon was just two days ago, so there’s that too.’

‘I know it,’ Sirius says, sounding angrier than he’s intending to in his worried state. ‘I spent it lying in some Highlands mud on the shores of Loch Ness, thinking of you.’

‘Is that where you were? Why were you there?’

‘There’s a manor house at the east end of the Loch that’s being used by the Death Eaters. We were spying.’ Sirius takes a deep breath and realises that he’s shaking. ‘Were you careful Apparating? Could you have been followed?’

Remus shakes his head and they look at each other for a long moment. ‘I thought you’d be happy to see me,’ Remus says, uncertain.

Sirius huffs in exasperation. ‘I was just a bit worried when I warned you that I’d gotten a tip off that you were in danger and then you were an hour late calling me and then a strange man Apparated into my back fucking garden!’

‘Fair enough,’ Remus says. They look at each other some more. A chain of explosions are going off in Sirius’s mind. ‘I…’ Remus starts, and then he stops and looks Sirius up and down.

‘What?’ Sirius demands.

‘Did you really think about me?’ Remus suddenly looks very young.

‘I thought of little else,’ Sirius says shortly. ‘Fuck, Moony, you had me really worried there.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Remus says. They pause again, and then Remus says, each word sounding like it’s being dragged out of his mouth, ‘I… was thinking of you too.’

Sirius’s anger fades away abruptly. ‘Did you just Apparate back here to see me?’

Remus looks embarrassed, but also a little bit sly. ‘Well, I mean…’ He shoves his hands into the pockets of his robe and says, ‘Can we go inside?’

It’s starting to rain, but Sirius hasn’t spent his entire life in the British Isles to be deterred by water falling from the sky. ‘Did you really just quit your mission to come back here and see me?’

‘The mission wasn’t working out,’ Remus says. ‘I’ve done all I can and you were right, or Minerva was, but thanks for passing it on. The situation was getting very hairy.’

‘I’m glad you came back,’ Sirius announces. He’s going to get this answer out of Remus if it kills him, which is seeming more likely by the second. Remus may be a master of evasion, but Sirius knows all of his tricks. ‘But I’m confused. Is it because your mission wasn’t going well, or because you were kind of lying when you said you weren’t going to be romantic about this?’

‘Can’t it be both?’ Remus is plaintive. ‘Also, I wouldn’t have come back if I’d known you were going to be so smug. God, you’re such a dog with a bone.’

Sirius starts smiling and can’t stop himself. ‘Moony,’ he says, and them he just beams.

‘Padfoot,’ Remus replies. He looks down at his shoes. ‘I know I talked a big game about being jaded and not wanting to get emotionally attached, but… I couldn’t bear it when you were gone.’ He puts a hand to his head and runs it through his hair, the picture of exasperation. ‘You’re making me crazy, Padfoot.’

‘Not for the first time,’ Sirius says, ‘and I hope not for the last.’ He reaches out and takes Remus’s hand. It is large, and warm, and as he leads him inside, he thinks, _I could certainly learn to like this_.

They sit on the couch, six inches between them, connected only by the entwined fingers of one hand. Sirius’s heart is beating very fast; beside him, Remus looks lost in thought.

Eventually, Sirius asks, ‘Tea?’

Remus gives a little start and looks sideways at him. ‘I’d rather kiss you, actually, though tea sounds nice as well.’

Sirius starts to feel light headed. Remus tugs him by the hand across the no-man’s land between them and puts a hand onto his cheek. ‘You sure about this, Padfoot?’ he asks, sounding worried. ‘Because this is your last chance to say no. In ten seconds, you will officially be breaking my heart.’

Sirius’s breath catches and he says, though his voice sounds distant to his own ears, ‘You’ll have to forgive me, Remus, because I’m quite out of practice.’ He closes the final distance between them and presses their lips together. Remus exhales against his mouth and then Sirius remembers how this works and suddenly they are really kissing, and it’s just as good as the first time, except a lot less sloppy and a lot more sober. At some point, Remus puts both hands on either side of Sirius’s face and Sirius puts one of his hands on Remus’s thigh and finds himself gripping it quite hard. They break apart for air and Sirius stares at Remus with enormous eyes. His look is mirrored in Remus’s face, who appears a little bit stunned and glassy-eyed.

‘So I guess that’s a lot like riding a broomstick then, huh?’ Sirius asks.

‘You seem to have remembered it pretty well,’ Remus agrees hoarsely. ‘So, uhm…’

Sirius kisses him again, and then again, and then they are snogging like teenagers on the couch in full view of the back garden. They half lie down and Sirius attempts to straddle Remus but the couch’s springs are a little bit uneven and his knee sinks down behind the cushions and he almost elbows him in the face. Remus starts laughing and tugs him down for another kiss, this one losing technical points due to the laughter but somehow all the more satisfying, before he says, ‘So, should we take this to your bedroom or mine?’

Sirius considers for a moment, and then says, ‘Yours, I think.’

It takes a few minutes later of kissing their way down the hallway to wind up in the bedroom. Sirius shuts the door out of long habit and then steps towards Remus and puts his hands on the collar of his shirt with some violence.

‘What on earth,’ Remus gasps, ‘are you about to _rip my shirt off_?’

‘This,’ Sirius says, pausing only, determined to do this, ‘is your pay back for teasing me every time you get undressed.’

‘What?’ Remus’s has brought his hands up to grab Sirius’s. ‘First of all, I’ve gotten undressed in front of you what, three times now?’

‘And every time,’ Sirius says, tugging gently, testing the button strength, ‘you have done it at the most torturous pace imaginable.’

‘But then my shirt will be ruined!’

‘Are you a wizard or not? Do a bloody sewing charm!’

‘I hate sewing charms!’

Sirius leans in close and bites Remus’s ear a bit harder than might strictly be called ‘lovingly’. Remus moans and slumps against him, his hands going slack, so Sirius bites it again, even harder this time. Remus moans more loudly. Maybe this is ‘lovingly’, then, just not the kind of lovingly that most people like. Sirius catalogues that away for later and says in Remus’s ear, ‘Then I will do the sewing charm for you. Or I will buy you a new shirt. I don’t care right now.’

‘You could,’ Remus is breathless, ‘have, oh, god, don’t stop, just unbuttoned it by now.’

‘Yes,’ Sirius agrees, enjoying this immensely and pressing little bites down Remus’s neck to his collarbone, ‘but you brought it up, so you have no one to blame but yourself.’

Remus’s hands fall to his sides and Sirius rips down the length of the shirt. It flies apart and it’s so satisfying and buttons bounce everywhere around the room, ricocheting off of the walls and wardrobe and Sirius shoves the remains of the shirt off and casts it aside and runs his hands down Remus’s hard chest and thinks, _yes, I can work with this_ ,which is a relief, because he’d been a little bit worried that he wouldn’t be able to get into the whole male body thing but this is actually incredibly sexy. Remus grabs him again and shoves him against the door and then the rest of their clothes are flying off in a frenzy of grabbing and ripping and yanking; Sirius’s trousers and pants wind up pooled around his ankles, a tripping hazard that he can’t seem to kick free of, but it doesn’t matter, because Remus is biting and kissing his way down his chest, pausing to suck on his nipples before suddenly kneeling before him and shoving his thighs apart. When he buries his nose into the hot space above Sirius’s cock, Sirius manages to regain some semblance of consciousness and gasps, ‘Wait.’

Remus’s eyes immediately flick upwards, but he does not remove his nose or mouth from the vicinity. The look upwards is burning enough that Sirius almost loses track of what he was going to say and Remus holds his gaze just long enough to make sure that Sirius knows he’s not the only one who can be torturous this evening and then drops his eyes again and flicks out his tongue and curls it around the head of Sirius’s cock.

‘Wait,’ Sirius tries again. ‘Moony.’

‘Hm?’ Remus asks. He starts to lathe Sirius’s cock with his tongue. The heat is amazing, the wetness is amazing, the texture is _so_ amazing… Remus stops and Sirius lets out a whine of frustration. ‘Yes? I do hope you’re not about to have second thoughts.’

‘Nuh,’Sirius says. ‘Nuh nuh.’ He tries again. ‘No, I mean, no. But I want to do. Things. To you.’ He slithers down the wall and it doesn’t take any effort at all because his legs have given up on supporting him anyway. Remus’s hands slide up his body as he slides down and he shivers into the touch.

‘Silly Padfoot,’ Remus says gently, ‘you can do things to me later.’

‘No,’ Sirius says, trying to be forceful, but it’s difficult when Remus has removed his trousers and pants fully now and is stroking his thighs and nuzzling his neck. ‘I want… to… Remus, you’ve got to stop that, I can’t think at _all_.’

Remus sighs and settles, wrapping his arms around Sirius’s shoulders. ‘What do you want?’ he asks, the picture of patience.

‘I want to make a, a, I don’t know, a gesture of good faith.’

‘Like what?’

Sirius takes a deep breath. ‘I want to suck you off.’

Remus looks floored, and then starts laughing. ‘That’s your good faith gesture?’ he asks. ‘A blowjob? Because maybe you’ve missed your calling as an ambassador. I think you could solve various world crises with that kind of thinking.’

Sirius glares at him and then pushes him forward, trying to negotiate him to lie on the floor. ‘I would think you’d be more appreciative,’ he says, frowning in concentration when Remus won’t lie down.

‘Really?’ Remus asks. ‘The floor?’

‘I’m looking for the optimal angle here.’

Remus starts laughing again and Sirius says, ‘You know, you could be a little more helpful. It’s been a very long time for me.’ He pauses. ‘I mean, if we’re talking about the whole sucking you off thing, it’s been an infinite amount of time.’

‘I know,’ Remus says, stroking Sirius’s shoulders. ‘I’m sorry. I should be more understanding. It’s just that, you know, you’re funny.’

‘I just want to be good at this.’

Remus kisses him so tenderly that Sirius feels like sinking into the floor and melting underneath his touch. ‘I know you do,’ Remus says. ‘I know. And you’re already a success. I’m having more fun than I think I’ve ever had in bed with someone and we just got naked. Think where the night will go from here.’ He kisses him again, much harder this time, and Sirius grabs at him frantically, suddenly on fire with lust.

‘Not the floor!’ Remus squawks as Sirius makes another play to push him down, and Sirius snarls in frustration and demands, ‘Are you always this picky?’

‘Remember the part where I got into a fight and then also the full moon was two days ago?’ Remus demands. ‘I don’t need to add friction burns to my list of injuries.’

Somehow, they make it onto the bed. Sirius successfully straddles Remus now and takes his time moving down Remus’s body. Remus writhes beneath him, his hands on Sirius’s shoulders and then in his hair, and it turns Sirius’s on so much that he forgets to think and buries his nose into the curling hair surrounding Remus’s cock and breathes in deeply. Everything smells of Remus and that smells amazing. Tentatively, he wraps a hand around Remus’s cock and strokes it, once. Remus arches his back and his fingers tighten in Sirius’s hair.

‘Uhm,’ Sirius hums, ‘any hints?’

Remus sits up slightly and Sirius enjoys watching his abs flex. He need not have worried about enjoying a very masculine body. ‘Hm,’ Remus says. ‘Well, the advice given to me was to… treat it like an ice cream cone.’

Sirius snorts. ‘That’s the advice you have for me? Mr Whippy?’

‘I’ve never had any complaints,’ Remus says huffily. ‘Then again, if you don’t want to…’

Sirius bends down and takes him in his mouth. It’s awkward for a second but then Remus’s hands in his hair tighten and he swirls his tongue and Remus gasps and then he starts to find a rhythm. He puts his free hand around Remus’s thigh and feels the hard muscles there. The noises Remus makes beneath him spur him onwards and when he draws back for a second to gasp for breath he sees that Remus is completely undone, back arched, hands clenched, his chest gleaming with sweat and so unbelievably sexy…

‘Are you deliberately denying me the privilege of you fucking my mouth?’ Remus gasps. ‘I have been fantasising about that since the first night on Skype!’

Sirius hesitates. He’s close to coming and he can guess from the tightening in Remus’s body that he is as well, but the thought of Remus even thinking about that is so hot that he wants to make it work. He has an idea but he’s not sure how it will work given his current amateur status in the sport of cock sucking. He’s an enthusiastic learner though, so he says, ‘Come here,’ and twists around, lying down on his side and tugging Remus by the hip towards his mouth. Remus quickly grasps what is happening and grabs Sirius’s thigh in an iron grip – _oh god oh god oh god_ is all Sirius can think, it’s just a chant in his head – and then Remus, with much more grace than Sirius had, lines up Sirius’s hips and does something with his mouth that can only be described as fully swallowing his cock and then, yes, maybe it is like an ice cream cone, Sirius has no idea, he can’t think at all, his head is between Remus’s strong thighs and this is the most amazing, it’s the greatest, _oh god_ , he squeezes Remus’s thigh, trying to indicate that he’s going to come, but it’s too late, and he can feel Remus swallowing and swallowing and then Remus draws away from him and gasps, ‘I’m going to,’ so he swirls his tongue around Remus’s head and holds onto him and he comes and comes. Sirius swallows and it tastes like some combination of salty and sweet, but not bad. Not bad at all. He lets Remus slide out of his mouth and buries his head in between his thighs. Remus laps gently at his cock for a few seconds and then pulls away from him, twists around so that they are lying face to face, and wraps his arms around Sirius.

‘How was that?’ he asks softly, stroking the fingers of one hand through Sirius’s hair and holding him tightly with the other.

‘I think,’ Sirius says, shaking a little as he lies there, trying to put things back together, ‘that I owe the Muggles an apology. Technology is pretty brilliant.’

Remus laughs softly against his hair. ‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘I think the camera distorted some things.’

‘Like what?’

‘I thought you were sexy before, but I didn’t realise just how sexy until I got to touch you.’

‘Oh my god,’ Sirius says, almost sitting up. ‘Oh my god, we have to find Peter right now.’

‘What?’ Remus asks, startled. ‘Why on earth...?’

‘That little rat bastard owes me five galleons,’ Sirius says, eyes gleaming. ‘And James owes me five as well, so I’ll take ten from Peter. No, fifteen.’

Remus gives him a wary look. ‘Is this some bet you had about the size of my penis or something?’

Sirius shakes his head. ‘The bet was whether or not you were a romantic,’ he says. ‘I was the only one who thought you would be, you know.’

Remus gives Sirius a long suffering look and says, ‘Thank you for reminding me of the stupid bets you lot used to make.’ He tugs him down again. ‘Now shut up and never bring either of those people up in bed again.’

‘Again,’ Sirius says brightly. ‘So you think there’s going to be an again?’

 Remus hums and says, ‘I’m not allowed to be romantic, so I can’t say.’

Sirius buries himself back down in Remus’s arms and kisses him lazily until he starts to drift off.

‘Hey Sirius?’ Remus asks eventually, nuzzling into his neck.

Sirius attempts to drag himself back to consciousness. ‘Mm?’

‘Why did you choose my room? Yours is closer.’

Sirius strokes the soft hair behind Remus’s ears and mumbles, ‘Well yours has a bigger wardrobe. And since I’m planning on sleeping here from now on, I figured I’d like a place to put my clothes.’

Remus half sits up and looks down at him, bemused. ‘Sleeping here from now on? That seems like quite the leap from a few Skype wank sessions and what could easily be considered a one night stand from a friend with benefits. ’

‘Yes, but, we’re practically already married, right?’ Sirius asks. ‘I pay the bills, you clean the sink…’ Remus snorts, but Sirius presses onward. ‘I figured I’d give you a few weeks to get used to things before I talked you into making it official.’ There’s a little shake to his voice that he disguises with a grin.

 ‘You’re upsetting the Church of England and a whole host of Tory backbenchers,’ Remus replies, but he’s grinning back. ‘And I can’t believe you haven’t cleaned the sink since I left.’

‘It hasn’t started smelling or anything. I’m sure it’s fine.’ He looks up at Remus, who is giving him what can only be described as a ‘loving gaze’. It’s sort of weird but it’s also really very wonderful. Luckily he’s long past the point of dignity with this particular man, so he says, ‘Who would have thought, after everything that’s happened, that you would turn out to be the one for me?’

‘Who would have thought,’ Remus agrees, and then he bends down to kiss Sirius again as he adds, ‘that anyone could teach an old dog new tricks?’


End file.
